


What Bleeds Through

by KibaKyrdimir



Series: Broken Blade [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Blades, Bonding, Dark Keith (Voltron), Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Galra Empire, Grief/Mourning, Half-Galra Keith (Voltron), Healing, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Keith (Voltron) Whump, M/M, Mating Bond, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Multi, Psychic Bond, Season/Series 07, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Soul Bond, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 61,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27971171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KibaKyrdimir/pseuds/KibaKyrdimir
Summary: Keith's life had been defined by the losses he had to bear: every person that has ever drifted into his orbit has either left him, or been taken from him.Yet after having finally found some semblance of a family within the ranks of the Blade of Marmora, and more importantly- a mate to anchor his soul to- Keith had allowed himself to feel happy, and to grow complacent in that happiness. But before he had known it, the universe had returned to lay claim to the small shreds of serenity that Keith had stolen for himself- some silent form of recompense for having dared to allow himself to feel anything other than disappointment.With the Blades decimated and his own psyche shattered- Keith must learn to pick up all the pieces of his broken life.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Vrek (Voltron)
Series: Broken Blade [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048603
Comments: 136
Kudos: 55





	1. The Damage Done to Us

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a continuation of "In the Back of Our Mind", and it does coincide and continue the events of that story. If you have not read Part One of this series first, please do. 
> 
> Additional Tag for this Chapter: Krolia/Tex relationship

Keith’s life had been defined by the losses that he had to bear. 

Everything given to him was yet another thing that he could expect to be torn from his clutches. For everything that he had gained, Keith had lost something else of incalculable importance. It was as if the universe itself had sent a dark collector, grasping for the taxes of Keith’s soul and stealing away the shards of happiness that had graced Keith’s life as an unspoken recompense for the fleeting moments of joy that had been lent to him; it was some twisted form of cosmic bartering that he had no control over.

Keith had been given life, but as a mere child- he would not be cognizant enough to appreciate the brief moments where his small family had been whole. Then, his mother had abandoned him- whisked away to fight in a war that bore no consequences to him. 

Krolia had left before his infant mind had been given the opportunity to form the words: “mother”, “please”, and “don’t go”.

He had a mother, and he had lost her.

When Keith had settled in to himself, and when he had found a pleasant routine in his life of which he could rely upon- the universe’s dark collector returned to lay claim to the small amounts of happiness he had. 

His father died: his life forfeit to an inferno of which Keith could direct no anger towards.

He was left standing in the doorway of their small home waiting for a man who would never again cross the horizon and bless Keith’s life with his warm smile or tight embrace. Keith had been a kid, and he did not have the presence of mind to treat every moment with his father as if it could have been their last together. 

Keith wasn’t even given the opportunity to say the word: “goodbye”.

He had a father, and he had lost him.

From there, Keith had been lost. Drifting through a parade of foster homes. Existing in a constant haze of fear that prevented anyone from glimpsing beyond the loss to see the small, scared boy that existed beneath the trauma. 

And then, Shiro. Shiro had been the first one to show Keith anything beyond pity and contempt, and Keith… Keith had stolen his car.

But for some unknown reason- Shiro believed in him. Shiro saw a purpose in Keith that Keith could not see for himself. Shiro had given him a place to belong, a place where he could thrive.

His time at the Galaxy Garrison was not without incident. Fistfights, disciplinary issues, unexcused absences… Keith seemed to do everything in his power to prove to Shiro that he was not worth the time nor the effort. But in spite of Keith’s efforts- Shiro unflappable confidence in him remained, and he had promised Keith, _“I will never give up on you.”_

Keith himself was never one for promises. If life had taught him anything of value- it was that grand gestures and hollow promises were the insidious tools of those that would only end up hurting you. Which is why it was better to push people away.

Yet, no matter how hard he pushed, Shiro stayed.

The two allowed them to get closer to one another, spending every idle moment they could find together, and as the years stretched on- Keith found himself unable to cope with the thought of a life without Shiro in it. 

And then, Shiro left for Kerberos. 

At the time, Keith was unable to reconcile his feelings with the man who had given him a life to live, and he couldn’t bring himself to choke out the three simple words that he had wished he had been strong enough to verbalize: “I”, “love”, and “you”.

He had someone to love, and he had lost him too.

  
The Galaxy Garrison presumed him dead- the crew having been lost in the far reaches of space due to “Pilot Error”. Keith grieved, he mourned, but he didn’t move on. He couldn’t. Shiro had been the only one that had mattered to Keith, and Keith still found himself unable to cope with the thought of a life without Shiro in it.

Against all odds, Shiro had returned- and together, they raced up to the stars and set themselves upon an adventure that would change the course of not only their lives, but of the entire universe. 

The adventure that these five intrepid Earthlings had set themselves upon had all started so innocently. Millions of lightyears away from their home, it was easy to view the millennia of oppression perpetrated by the Galra Empire through the lens of cold detachment: that these children were merely ‘playing soldier’ and that this war was of little consequence to their own lives. Armor clad in the impenetrable visage of the Legendary Defender, the conquests of Voltron had seemed like a game- with each Galra Battlecruiser being yet another blip on their radar that they could wipe from the skyline. 

But the consequences soon caught up to the Paladins. 

Shiro had died. Yet another casualty that had drifted into Keith’s orbit that the universe had chosen to take from him. This was the first callous reminder to these children that they were party to a _war_ , and that in war, battles leave scars.

And so, Keith was to be the new leader of Voltron. He was saddled with different expectations, and burdened by the cost of the choices that he’d have to make for the sake of war effort. Yet every decision he made was brokered with doubt, arguments, and questions- and it had reaffirmed what he had already known to be true: that he was not fit to be the leader of Voltron. His actions had driven a wedge between himself and those he thought he could call his _family-_ until the distance that had grown between them was vast enough to chart a wormhole through. In the end, the Paladins were just more people that would drift away from him.

When Shiro had returned and retaken the mantle as the Black Paladin, the immense burden of leadership was lifted from Keith’s shoulders and he could breathe easy once more.

He was freed from his responsibility, free to push away from the hollow shells of individuals emulating the trust he thought he could place in them. But without the only family he had come to know- he was once again, lost.

There- in the darkness- sequestered from his team by the schism that his “leadership” had caused, he had found The Blade of Marmora. Despite their unflinching facade and impenetrable stares, the Blades were a group that cared deeply for one another. They were not the emotionally uncoupled operatives that they would lead others to believe; they were a motley assortment of half-breeds and traitors that were neither welcome in the arms of the resistance or within the ranks of the Empire. All they had was each other. Amongst those who would understand and empathize with his displacement in this cruel reality, Keith knew that he had finally found people who would _understand_ him… people of whom he could call _family_. 

Then there was Vrek. Keith had come barrelling into Vrek’s life without warning or readiness. Everything that Keith had been searching for in his life- the connection, the love, the _belonging…_ he had found with Vrek. Vrek loved him beyond what Keith would even believe was possible, and Keith soon realized that all he needed… all he had _ever_ needed… was Vrek.

Now, a family found amongst the Blades, a mate found in Vrek, and a mother that Keith had believed all but lost, Keith’s small family was growing. The change was sudden and welcome, but it was overwhelming- although with so much gained, Keith couldn’t help but smile at the thought of being overwhelmed. 

  
  
  


He had been given too much.

  
  
Now, the universe’s dark collector had returned to take what it was due, and it was once again time for Keith to pay the price for the happiness that he had been lent. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


They had spent a month traversing the back of the giant space whale, foraging and scavenging for what they could all while searching for a more viable safe haven of which to settle. The biomes present atop this floating sanctuary were staggering, with each day of travel bringing Keith and Krolia to new environments, each one a closed ecosystem unto itself. 

It was on the fifth week of wandering that something of note had finally occurred. 

A beam of brilliant, luminescent blue burned through the atmosphere and tore a hole through the tranquil sky: a comet, setting the sky ablaze with the coruscating ripples left in its wake. It crashed somewhere on the horizon before them, and for reasons unknown, Keith started racing towards it.

There, embedded into the ground, was a small mass of black and blue laying at the center of the impact crater left by the ‘comet’. It started to move, and clearly- very clearly, it began to resemble what looked to be a puppy. The pup reared its head up, taking in cautious peeks at its new surroundings before burying its head back in the sanctity of its fur. The ‘comet’ yelped at every skittering movement, afraid of the wisps of fire that danced around the earth in the impact crater that it had created, afraid of the rustle of leaves in the breeze, and afraid of the shadow it cast- it couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. 

Keith and Krolia studied the small creature from the treeline, and soon enough, others began to take interest in the new creature that had arrived upon the back of the space whale. Like white blood cells drawn to the source of an infection, a horde of giant, chitin clad creatures began to encircle the small pup- maws dripping saliva in anticipation of the easy meal of which they would surely devour. 

“We should keep moving. We can let nature take its course.” Krolia grabbed her son by the arm, intent on pulling him away from the gruesome scene of which was about to occur. The universe was cruel- but such was the way of life. 

Keith stared at the small pup, and, as if summoning the creature’s own curiosity- the pup tilted its head in Keith’s direction, and stared back. Keith was rooted in place, unable to look away from the defenseless creature. What had been so afraid of everything else now stared into the very depths of Keith’s heart with an unblinking defiance. Perhaps the creature knew that Keith would bear it no ill will, or perhaps the creature was aware of the situation it was in- surrounded by giant insectoids that it could in no way hope to escape from. Whatever the reason was, the creature looked into Keith’s very being, and Keith knew the unspoken plea that the creature was trying to communicate to him. 

  
  


_Help me._

  
  


Keith leapt into action. Darting from the foliage and rushing to the aid of this wounded animal. 

“Keith-! What are you-?” Krolia’s confused shouts fell upon deaf ears. By the time the words could leave her mouth, the boy had already plunged into the heat of battle, his blade already deep inside the waiting maw closest to the pup. 

Keith kept his back towards the small animal, never stepping more than a few feet away from its side as he ducked and dodged the giant clawed appendages that were lashing out towards him from these monstrously sized insects. One of these creatures raised it’s claw high above its head, and brought down the full weight of its force upon the small Blade. Keith ducked into a crouch, blocking the chitinous claw with the flat of his sword. He reversed the grip he had on the hilt, sliding the edge of his luxite along the underside of the creature’s claw until he could connect it with the soft tissue of the bended joint. He pulled as hard as he could. 

A dark, viscous fluid painted the ground before him as the creature howled in pain. One of its legs now rend from its body, the creature tried fruitlessly to find its balance- and when it canted forward, it was met with the sharpened point of Keith’s sword driving through the armored plating of what would be considered its head. 

Keith shoved his blade forward with all his might, burying the sword deeper and deeper in the insect and ignoring the squealing protests that erupted from the creature. When the hilt of his sword finally connected with the shell, Keith twisted his blade, and kept doing so until its three remaining legs stopped spasming. 

The rest of the insects backed off from Keith and his new charge, figuring that this meal was not worth the effort it had proven to be.

Keith turned back to the small pup, gathering it in his arms and holding the soft bundle of fur tight against him. The pup pressed itself against the warm of Keith’s chest, settling against the gentle thumping of Keith’s heartbeat.

“That was stupid. Beyond reckless.” The disappointment in Krolia’s voice was more than evident as she grabbed her son by his shoulders and gave the boy a visual inspection to see that he had suffered no injuries in the defense of this pitiful creature. 

Krolia’s reprimand was all but ignored as Keith gingerly held the pup in his arms, his eyes not leaving the bundle of fur as he spoke. “What is it? A dog of some kind?”

Krolia narrowed her eyes at the creature. “A cosmic wolf. A rare creature. It is said that packs of these animals wander the universe, feasting upon entire crews of battleships that happen to venture out into deep space.”

Keith studied the pup in his arms, attempting to piece together how something so helpless could grow into something so vicious.

“It looks small, even for its age.” Krolia continued. “It was likely abandoned by its pack for being the runt of the litter. We should leave it here. We have neither the time nor the resources to raise it.”

Now Keith did look back at Krolia, the contempt in his gaze almost as biting as the tone of his voice, “Is that what your instincts are telling you, _Krolia?_ That our lives would be easier if we _left it behind?_ Is that your answer to _everything_ _?_ ”

Krolia recoiled from the words that were spilling out of her son’s mouth. The words were cruel, they were intended to hurt, and Krolia could offer nothing in her own defense because her son was _right_. In Galran culture, the attachment to one’s family -to their _legacy-_ was of the utmost importance, and to many, child abandonment was a crime more dishonorable than the most heinous acts imaginable. If put upon trial by her peers- Krolia would certainly face death, and after everything that she had put Keith through- the cruelty of the truth was the least of what she deserved. 

There were no further discussions on the matter. They kept the wolf. 

It wasn’t much longer after their initial encounter with the cosmic wolf did they find a suitable shelter of which they could call home. The small cave rested in the foot of a small hill, and with only a few slight improvements, would adequately shelter them from the elements. Their new home was not too far a distance from the largest source of freshwater that they had stumbled across in their voyage, and while the lingering presence of those giant insect-like creatures meant that they would need to sleep in watchful shifts throughout the night- it also meant that they had an abundance of food that they could hunt. 

As the weeks passed, Krolia would typically find her son coddling the small wolf, cradling the creature against his chest and cooing soft noises at it to soothe its distressed whines. When his gentle noises would no longer suffice, Krolia would catch Keith in idle conversation with the beast, sharing stories with the animal that she had yet to hear for herself. The wolf would quiet its yowling, and stare at Keith intently whenever the boy saw fit to speak to it about himself.

“... his name is Vrek, and you’re going to like him a lot. He’s the kindest, gentlest person in the universe.” Keith’s fingers worked their way behind the wolf’s head, dragging his dull fingertips along the base of the wolf’s ears. A soft chuckle manifested itself in Keith as he pet his furry companion, “And he likes this, too. _Right_ behind the ears.”

As the weeks stretched into months, the wolf grew at an exponential rate, soon able to rear itself up on his hind legs and dwarf Keith with its sheer size. The wolf no longer needed Keith’s protection, but Keith still offered it. 

Keith’s protective nature of the wolf only seemed to grow- as he frequently found himself reaching out for the creature to ensure its safety at his side. In actions that seemed to be driven purely by his subconsciousness, Keith started to find himself constantly burying a hand within the soft fur of the wolf’s back. He _needed_ something to _protect_.

There was a steady drip-drip-drip of anxiety festering in Keith’s mind -like an IV trickling fear into Keith’s bloodstream- and Keith’s worrying could only be placating when he was reassured that his wolf was at his side. 

Krolia should have seen the signs earlier, she should have recognized the defensiveness. 

Her son wasn’t an alpha, but he was experiencing the rut of one. Wherever Keith’s mate was now, he was experiencing a rut without his omega, and the residual emotions from that rut were echoing into Keith’s mind through the bond that they shared. 

As Keith’s condition started to worsen, she frequently found her son baring his teeth at her when she returned to their home, placing himself between the wolf and the entrance to their cave as if to shield his friend from the hostility at their door. 

She needed to keep Keith present. She needed him to remain focused. No matter how powerful the nagging sensation of a rut might be- Keith needed to have the presence of mind not to exhaust himself or injure himself during a lapse of reasonable judgement, as alphas in rut tended to do.

She needed to get him talking, and so she broached the topic of his mate.

Krolia was not blind, she had noticed the bracelet that had adorned her son’s wrist the minute she had caught sight of him in Ranveig’s base. She knew what the bond bracelet had meant, and she knew the heavy implication that it carried with it. 

The vexation was apparent in Keith whenever his fingers idly traced the woven strands of fabric (a habit that was increasing in frequency over the past few weeks), and whenever his eyes dared to inspect the colorful remnants of the promise that was tied around his wrist. 

There had been moments where she had caught her son’s forlorn stares at his bond bracelet. She pretended not to notice. It was a look she knew too well, one that she had recognized in herself in the months that had haunted her after she had left Tex behind. 

In a way, she resented her son’s bond bracelet. Her resentment was pitiful, nothing more than mere jealousy. Tex had presented her with a wedding ring, and at the time- she had refused. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mate, she did, and she’d immediately regretted her hasty refusal upon seeing the dejected look in Tex’s face- but a wedding ring would have drawn _questions_. Questions that, as an undercover agent, she would be unable to provide any answers to. But in the time that has come to pass, she had wished desperately that she had some sort of memento from her mate. Instead, the only reminder she had of their love was the spiteful and contemptuous looks from her son whenever they made eye contact.

Perhaps she was afraid to say anything about her son’s bondmate in fears that it would reopen the old wounds of the love she left behind. Perhaps she was afraid of acknowledging yet another milestone in her son’s life that she had missed. Or perhaps she was just afraid that every tentative conversation she approached with her son might result in a misspoken word or an unintended insult. Yes, her son was _here_ with her- but in spite of that, he felt further away than ever before. 

In some of the hardest days she had spent undercover in the Empire, she took solace in the idea that she had a family awaiting her return. On the darkest of those days, Krolia would retreat into herself and dream a fantasy where she would return to Earth to happily rush into the arms of her mate… and be introduced to the son that had all but heard of his mother’s noble battle to keep him safe. 

That dream had been shattered when she had come face-to-face with her son: a warrior, a Paladin of Voltron, a fellow Blade. She had abandoned her family so that her son would never have to face the same struggles that she had spent her life fighting against. Yet the minute that she had seen her son dressed in the familiar wrappings of a Blade operative, she had realized that everything that she had sacrificed had all been for naught. The war that she had hoped to spare her family from had infected her son. 

She should have stayed on Earth.

But it would be of no use to mourn the fictional future that she wished for, so instead, she decided to make the best of the situation at hand.

Her dream was dead, and all she had left was the broken reality of which she could only hope to salvage.

“So… you found an alpha?” The question was timid, and it had caught her son off guard.

Keith immediately wrapped his hand around the bracelet that adorned his wrist, as if shielding his past and its implications from his mother. His response, a nod, accompanied by a clipped, “Yes.”

“A Blade?”

Another nod, Keith’s eyes studied the ground intently, a blush rising in his pale cheeks. 

“Tell me about him.”

“Why?” Keith let out a heavy sigh, acknowledging the intrusion upon the privacy of his memories, “You’ve been in my memories. You’ve seen him.”

“I have, but…” Krolia pursed her lips together, her brow furrowing as she finds no apology worthy of the tresspasses she has been forced to commit in her son’s mind, “I would still like to hear it from you.”

A long, sullen silence passed between mother and son. And so, Krolia broke the uncomfortable quiet with words of her own.

“Your father. I remember his taste in music.” She leaned back against the cave wall, letting the glow of the campfire warm her heart. “I hated it. Such loud noise. Nothing but drums.”

During her time on Earth, she had hated Tex’s music. It was obnoxious, and the man had always insisted that the music be played at its loudest possible volume. _“Music like this should be felt in your bones,”_ he had said.

“He would drive up in his dilapidated pick-up, blaring music as if to announce his arrival.” She sighed, letting her eyes wander to the dancing flames before her. “I hated it then, but now, I would give anything to hear those stupid drums once more, and to see that barely functioning vehicle rattle in to the driveway.”

The fire crackled and the wood in the pyre snapped, chasing embers up into the dark night.

“ _My Sharona._ ” Keith said, nodding. “He would always come home playing _My Sharona._ Every time. Without fail.”

Krolia chuckled, attempting to invite that truly horrid sound back to her ears. “Yes. Yes he did.”

Keith gave a short huff of laughter, a novel sound that Krolia lamented that she had not heard enough of. “And that pick-up was older than the Galaxy Garrison itself. I don’t know why he never bought a newer model.”

“He said his truck had _character_.” Krolia recalled.

“What it _had_ was a broken transmission.” Keith’s amusement started to rise in his chest, and soon, it was bubbling out of him in the form of a nostalgic smile. The smile brightened his features and it lightened the heaviness in his heart. “One day- he came home _pushing_ that stupid truck back in to the driveway.”

“All the way out into the desert?”

“All the way out into the desert!” Keith’s shoulders eased up, and the giggling laughter that rumbled through his chest relaxed him. “I told him that he needed to just buy a new truck. But _nooOooOoo_ , he just patched that old thing up and continued to drive it home until--”

His expression froze, his smile dissolving before Krolia’s very eyes until his face was once again set in sadness. 

“Until…?”

“Until he _didn’t_. Until one day… he just… didn’t come home.” Keith pulled his knees back up to his chest and curled in on himself in what was a clear sign of him trying to, once again, close himself off from the universe. Just as quickly as Keith had found happiness, it had faded away. 

Keith’s eyes fell back to the dirt before him, now out of morbid contemplation instead of embarrassment. 

“Vrek,” Keith coughed, trying to dislodge the lump that was causing his words to catch in his throat. “He would always be there. I’d wake up, and he would be there- holding me against his side and letting me know that I was _safe_.”

“He sounds like a good alpha.”

“The best...” Keith’s hand moves without him realizing it, coming to a rest over where his scent gland was located, nestled between his neck and shoulder. His fingers trace the fabric of his uniform, unconsciously drawing small circles over his bond mark. 

“... He would always listen to me.” The beginnings of a smile flickered upon his lips. “I once joked about him getting down on a knee to propose to me, and then he did. And he did it on our _‘honeymoon’_. As I was learning to be more Galra for him, he was trying to be more _human_ for me.”

Keith’s fingers slid underneath the hem of his Blades uniform, grazing the raised scar tissue that Vrek had left him as a lingering reminder of his love. Keith continued, “He always supports me. He doesn’t tell me that I’m wrong, or that I’m not deserving. He’s there for me.”

Krolia rested her elbow upon her knee, and her head in the palm of her hand as she listened to her son piece together emotions of which he could only attempt to capture in words. 

The flash over the trees in the distance drew their focus to the next pulse of light that emanated from the Quantum Abyss, and suddenly…

… Keith had his back to the wall, inside the Galra base that housed it’s newest form of artillery- split from his Blade companions to help secure every route to the control room. The Blitz had begun, Olia’s attack on the first Zyforge Cannon was already underway, and it was up to the Blades to take down the second Cannon on the surface of Senfamma. 

The strike team that Kolivan had assembled for the attack had consisted of Kolivan himself, Keith, and the Blade’s medic: Vrek. Keith hadn’t been on a mission with Vrek prior to this operation, and- at the time- he paid little mind to the medic, barely even recollecting what the Blade’s face looked like under the mask.

Adrenaline was coursing through Keith’s veins: it focused him, it made him more acutely aware of the pair of heavily clanking footsteps that were approaching him from around the corner. Two sentries, three at the most. He pressed himself back against the small alcove allotted by the Galra’s counterintuitive architecture, biding his time and waiting for the Galra patrol to step into his kill radius.

The bulky frame of a Galra sentry steps into Keith’s peripheral vision, and Keith strikes. 

Holding his knife in a backhand grip, Keith drives his blade into the faceplate of the sentry closest to him. The magenta lights filling it’s helmet flicker and die, and the sentry bangs against the floor in a useless pile of discarded metal. Immediately, Keith is confronted by three rifles aimed directly towards him- two from the additional sentries he had accounted for, and one from a Galran Guard of which he had not. 

_Shit_. Keith hadn’t imagined that the heavy footfalls of the sentries were masking the footsteps of a much smaller, much lighter Imperial Soldier. But it was too late now. He would have to act, or he would die. 

Keith stepped into the arms reach of the nearest sentry, his knife coming up inside the sentry’s wrist and relieving the mechanical combatant of its hand. He sinks his blade into the chest of the sentry, and twists the rifle out of its disembodied grasp to fire at its companion. 

The second sentry went down in a barrage of laserfire, but the soldier that was escorting the machines had lined up his shot, and Keith wouldn’t have time to readjust his aim or to take cover from the soldier’s attack. 

Keith dared to face his opponent, fully aware that he would be facing down the barrel of pulse rifle.

A sharp whistle cut through the air, and before Keith could register the flash of luxite that soared over his shoulder- the Galra soldier who had him in his sights had been impaled by the thick machete-like blade of one of his cohorts. It was Vrek.

“You’re clear. Keep going.” The medic was a few meters back from Keith, having thrown his blade to prevent Keith from being gunned down in what was a rather careless miscalculation on Keith’s part. 

Keith dipped his head in an appreciative nod towards his fellow Blade, before dropping the rifle and removing his knife from the sparking corpse of the sentry and continuing to the control room…

… Keith let the blinding white light fade out from the memories that he was forced to relive, his eyes wetting from the thought that he could only squeak out. “He’s _always_ been there for me.”

Krolia pondered her son’s attachment, hoping that one day- that her son would speak of her with such conviction. “I would like to meet him, Keith.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that too.”

The smile returned to Keith’s face, and this time, it stayed there.

She did her best to keep Keith tempered… distracted… so that he could ride-out the duration of his mate’s rut without having to succumb to his more primal instincts. 

Galran rut cycles typically last one full Earth-week- nearly an entire movement, but time in the Quantum Abyss did not pass normally: the closer they drifted to a dark star, the denser the gravity would become, and the slower time would progress. 

As fate would have it, the distance that the space whale had placed between them and the nearest gravity well was significant- and the six weeks of what was Vrek’s rut cycle passed through Keith without much incident. 

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  


The morning had been typical. Krolia woke from her slumber to find that Keith and the wolf had already procured them a hearty kill for breakfast. 

Their listless conversation had begun when Keith commented on the star that they were passing. Krolia had responded by saying that the density of the star would stretch the time that would pass for them to near-incalculable limits, at which point, the conversation then drifted to where their conversations typically drifted to- with Keith lamenting that he could not be at his mate’s side.

“I am sorry about the length of this journey, Keith.” 

The smile that Keith returned to Krolia was one laced with sadness. “I know you are, Krolia. But what’s been a year for us has barely been more than a week for him, right? This time apart is longer for me than it will be for Vrek. I just have to stay strong.”

The wolf gave Keith a sympathetic whine, and Keith reached over to ruffle the fur atop the creature’s head as a silent form of reassurance that he would be okay. Keith continued, “You know, I didn’t bring this up to get an apology out of you. I just wanted to say how beautiful the star is.”

“Yes…” Krolia tilted her head back, and stared at the sphere of super-dense, ever-combusting gases that was endlessly exploding before them. “Yes, I suppose it is quite beautiful.”

The errands of the afternoon found Keith and Krolia in their daily routine of calisthenics: the routine helped them to preserve their mental discipline as much as the activities allowed them to maintain their physical one. Cardio was important, as was maintaining muscle mass; the gravity sustained by the space whale was much lighter than what would be considered ‘normal’ for either of the Blades, and with them knocking upon the doorstep of the unknown- they couldn’t afford to lose their edge. 

The two had been sparring, consistently evenly matched and forced to find faults within each other's fatigue in order to gain the advantage in hand-to-hand combat. But today, Keith found himself to be distracted.

Keith threw his hand out in a punch- it didn’t connect, and he let his fist linger when he should have withdrawn. Krolia seized his forearm in her grasp, using her free hand to travel up the length of Keith’s arm to deliver a back-fist to Keith’s exposed face. 

She stopped just short of his cheek, failing to deliver a blow that would surely have snapped his attention back on to the moment at hand.

“Keith!” 

Dazed, Keith tried his best to shake some semblance of awareness back into his head. 

“Keith, you need to remain _focused_. Any distractions in the field could cost you your life.”

Keith nodded, pantomiming an acknowledgement of her advice. “I’m sorry, Krolia- I just… something’s wrong…”

His hand drifted down to his stomach, fisting a handful of fabric of his uniform as he tried to make sense of the sinking feeling that was weighing down his every move. And then, like a supernova, Vrek’s voice filled his mind. 

_Keith, I’m sorry I-_

_Sorry? Sorry for what? What’s going on?_ The words were jumbled, fragmented, thrown into the cosmic winds and cast to it’s tides like a message in a bottle. Keith couldn’t get every word, but he could feel the _intention_ behind the words. And what Vrek was saying was…

… _farewell_.

_… Be strong and be brave-_

“We should get back to the cave. That’s enough for today.” Krolia took her son by the arm, and started to lead him away from the small clearing and back in the direction of their home. If her work as a Blade had taught her anything- it had been to trust your instincts, and to prepare for the worst. 

But the worst was nowhere near as terrible as what happened next.

Keith doubled over, falling to the ground as a searing pain started to press into his stomach. Something was slowly being driven into his gut, excruciatingly slowly, like a knife being slipped into his soft, yielding flesh a single millimeter per minute.

“Keith! What’s wrong?” Krolia dropped to her son, letting her hands search his body for any injuries. 

“I don’t… _it hurts_ … I-” Keith clenched his jaw in a vain attempt to hold the pain at bay. It burned, and every second brought forth a new understanding of pain as the pressure inside of him built as his imaginary wounds worsened. “It _hurts…_ ”

“Wolf!” Krolia shouted into the distance. The direction didn’t matter- the wolf would hear. 

Moments later- the air around them burned as the crackle of the cosmic wolf’s presence emerged from the nothingness that had been beside them. The wolf’s eyes were set upon Keith, attempting a visual inspection of its friend in order to discern why he had been called. 

“Something is wrong with Keith, take us home. Now!” 

The wolf nodded in understanding, pressing its thick hide against Keith’s leg and zapping the trio back to their home in an instant. 

The pain inside of Keith grew and grew with each passing moment. Krolia had attempted to lay her son against the floor, but Keith struggled and writhed around in a way that made him nearly impossible to handle. 

“Keith, move your hands. I need to see what’s wrong.” Krolia pulled Keith’s hands away from the front of his suit, and found… nothing. The fabric was intact. There was no blood. There were no puncture wounds. 

“ _GAAAAAAAAAH-!_ ” Keith couldn’t remain silent any more. He wretched his hands out of his mother’s grasp and he placed them back over the non-existent wounds on his midsection. The pain was sharp, and it was working it’s way deeper. 

Krolia searched the recesses of her memory to recall upon the remnant knowledge of field dressing that she had all but forgotten. 

“Keith, lay back.” Krolia worked as deftly as she could, pulling the zipper on the back of Keith’s neck down the length of his spine until she could pull the front of his uniform down far enough to expose the pains he was experiencing. 

She expected to find bruising, maybe a sign of internal bleeding- but still… there was nothing. Keith was, by all accounts, fine. The only indication of his suffering was the blood curdling screams that were being torn from his throat by whatever invisible force was attacking him. Krolia’s eyes darted around Keith’s torso. He was fine. He was uninjured. The only scars he bore were that of-

_\- of his bond mark._

There was nothing she could do to help. There was nothing in her power that would ease this suffering. 

Keith’s fingers dug into the dirt around him, his blunted nails scratching into the surface of the ground. The feeling inside of him was unbearable. He screamed. 

He screamed until he had flushed all the air from his lungs. He screamed until he blacked out.

But the pain did not stop. 

Krolia spent the next few hours at her son’s side, wiping the sweat off of Keith’s brow and pressing a cold compress over his exposed stomach to help soothe the blights of his trauma. 

Keith would wake every few hours, yanked from the depths of unconsciousness back into the throes of agony by the sound of his own screaming. He would thrash around on the floor, applying pressure to wounds that simply weren’t there, until the adrenaline in his system wore out, and he would once again lose consciousness. 

Krolia took post up against the side of the cave, her eyes never leaving the slow rise and fall of Keith’s chest to ensure that her son was, in fact- still breathing. His entire existence was boiled down to hours of overwhelming agony, and Krolia could do nothing but watch.

Keith couldn’t eat, he could barely drink water, and his bouts of unconsciousness could barely be considered ‘sleep’, as his brain was merely shutting itself down every time the suffering became unbearable. 

The cosmic wolf became instrumental to their survival, taking up the responsibilities of hunting and gathering water for the trio while Krolia spent every idle moment with her son.

What brief moments of rest that Krolia could steal for herself were always interrupted by Keith’s howling. Krolia hated it. She hated that her son was being put through this. She hated that there was nothing that she could do. And… deep down, she hated that- whenever Keith cried out for help- it was always for Vrek, and never for her.

Krolia woke one night to find Keith’s legs pulled up to his chest, and the boy sobbing quietly as he whispered, “ _...Vrek, please… please help me. Help me, Vrek. Please. Vrek…”_

It took weeks for the cycle of torture to finally stop, and when it did- Keith was only given a few days worth of respite before the anguish began anew.

The only reprieve that Keith would have from the agony would be the flashes of light from the Quantum Abyss that would invade his mind and fling his consciousness through the barriers of time. 

There was pain, and then…

… There was Shiro. Keith was staring into his eyes, falling into the deep pools of pewter that were just as entrancing now as they had been when Keith had first fallen in love with him.

He could feel Shiro’s palm resting against the small of his back. They were sitting together atop a cot in the back of the Black Lion. 

Shiro was close, close enough to let Keith feel the heat of each weary breath he was taking. The two were drifting towards each other, as surely as they had always been drifting towards each other, until suddenly, their lips pressed together. 

Keith melted into the kiss. Shiro’s lips were hot, and the warmth quickly spread from Keith’s lips and through his chest until suddenly, it was as if he would never feel cold again. Everything had felt so dead, and so hollow- and Shiro’s mere presence wiped all of that away until Keith no longer felt alone. It was everything that Keith had wanted, and it was as perfect as he had dreamed it would be.

But the moment was tainted, because Keith’s heart ached for Vrek.

Yet Shiro was there, and soon enough, Keith had found his own hands desperately roaming over Shiro’s body in an effort to peel the man out of his bodysuit. He had loved Shiro for so long, and now- it seemed as if Shiro had finally allowed himself to love Keith back.

He should have been happy. 

But he could still feel the grief…

Before Keith could question the future he was glimpsing, he was thrust back into the present- his body wracked with pain as his entire life was once again swallowed by the unrelenting pain. As time would pass- he would find his solace not in the uncertainty of the future, but in the comfort of time now past. His happiest moments laid out before him like an escape from the darkness he had been thrown in to, and in the happiest of those moments… there was Vrek.

… Keith’s fingers were threaded through the thick fur of his mate’s hair, lovingly caressing the base of the fluffy ears that squared off Vrek’s profile. They were back on Karrahe. For as disastrous as that vacation might have ended up being, this singular, untainted moment -stolen for themselves before this unassuming well- was theirs. And it was perfect.

His mate let out a trill of happiness, the beginnings of a deep purr reverberating through his chest. Vrek closed his eyes and leaned his head against the reassuring presence of Keith delicate digits, chasing after the bliss that Keith could so easily hurtle him towards. 

A smile played across Keith’s lips, it was an almost devious smile- knowing the effect that Keith would have on the man that loved him with every ounce of his being. Vrek was perfect. And Keith would do everything in his power to treat him as wonderfully as he deserved. 

He pulled his hand out of the soft lilac of Vrek’s head fur, instead using his hand to pull at the sleeve of Vrek’s silver tunic. “Come on, where was it that we were headed?”

They would spend their day drifting lazily down the rivers of Karrahe, before ascending the side of a mountain and basking in the most exorbitant form of relaxation that Keith could possibly imagine.

“ _Vrek…_ ” Returned to the present, Keith was once again seized by pain, and whatever loving whispers he wanted to form were replaced with a sharp cry for his mate. “VREK! HELP ME!”

Another flash. Another place far off in his own timeline. 

… Keith was standing in an ornate hallway- the high ceilings and reflective walls of his surroundings screaming a regality that Keith was unfamiliar with. Before him, stood both Shiro and _Vrek_. 

Keith would’ve wanted nothing more in that moment to rush into the arms of his mate, but he was rooted in place. A prisoner within his own body as he watched the situation before him deteriorate. 

Shiro’s hands were up, a clear gesture of submission as Shiro took wary steps away from Vrek. “Vrek, you need to calm down…”

Vrek’s fists were clenched, his fangs were bared. Each retreating step Shiro took away from him was countered by Vrek taking another step towards Shiro, as if to make escape a futile effort. 

“- _Everything_ , Shiro! How could you be so _stupid?!”_ His shouts echoed through the distinguished halls. 

Vrek moved with a speed that Keith was familiar with: A speed that Shiro was unprepared for. Vrek closed the distance between himself and Shiro in the blink of an eye, and before the human could react, Vrek had taken fistfuls of Shiro’s uniform in his hands and had brutally slammed Shiro back against the nearest wall. Their eyes were locked on each other’s as if Keith’s own presence was something that barely registered to either of them.

 _No_. Was the only thought that Keith could manage before his mind was pulled away from these events- flung across the cosmos into a different point in his future. 

… Keith was slamming his fists against something hard and metal. The shouts of his friends all but lost to him as their meaningless words failed to pull him back to the realm of sanity. 

“Keith! STOP!” It was Pidge. 

“You’re going to hurt yourself!” It was Hunk. 

A hand on his shoulder. The familiarity of the presence should have felt calming, but in the current moment, Keith felt anything but calm. 

He lashed out. 

He swiped at the figure behind him, not caring who had come to his side. He was intent on clawing his way through the wall before him, and _no one_ would be able to stop him. His flailing elicited a sharp yelp from whoever was behind him, one of his claws had connected with someone.

“Allura!” A rush of footsteps towards his injured compatriot, and in an instance, Keith was flooded with an overwhelming feeling of guilt. He turned back to find the Paladins huddled around the Princess of Altea.

Allura was holding her arm, her face contorting into one of pain. 

“Allura,” Keith found his voice. His eyes searching the scene before him for an apology he didn’t quite know how to form. He reached out for his friend, “Allura, I’m sorry-”

“Don’t you touch her!” Lance’s eyes were welled up with tears, his gaze condemning Keith’s actions, a scathing indictment of the _‘team’_ that had formed around him. 

Keith didn’t deserve to be their leader. He’d never deserved that responsibility.

“I’m- I’m fine, Lance.” Allura’s composure was cracked, but not broken. “Keith, are _you_ alright?”

He looked down at his own hands to find that his nails had sharpened into clawed tips and torn through his Paladin gloves. And there, in the reflection of his own visor, he saw himself. His eyes were different: the unmistakable gold of his Galran lineage bleeding into the once-white of his sclera, his pupils sharpening into a much harsher edge than what would typically be found in a human. Keith ran his tongue over his teeth and found that his canines had sharpened into fangs. He was a monster, and his actions were monstrous. 

He hated it. He hated himself. 

Keith collapsed on to the cold floor beneath him, and blacked out. 

Keith was returned to the present. 

The present was filled with pain, and it looked like the future would be no different. 

  
  
  


The pain lasted 8 months.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


When dawn crested over the treetops of their horizon, Krolia was roused from her sleep by the warmth of the morning glow- and not by the sounds of her son’s suffering. 

Keith was sitting a few meters out from the mouth of the cave. A fair distance away from the campfire, with his wolf at his side. He was cold, as evident by the frozen breaths that escaped his mouth. 

Keith stared at the large star whose gravity well they were now leaving behind. The pain of the last few months had been the most insufferable pain that Keith had ever known. But now, he missed it. He missed it because he could still _feel_ the pain. 

When the pain stopped, he should have felt relieved. Instead, he felt nothing at all. Keith couldn’t _feel_ anything at all. Vrek’s very presence was ripped out of his mind as if someone had reached into Keith’s chest and torn out his still-beating heart. Now, there was a numbness, a hollowness, an emptiness that had taken residency in the gaping wound that used to house Keith’s very essence.

Keith would’ve given anything to feel that pain again, because _anything_ was better than this emptiness.

“... he’s gone.” His voice was hoarse and cracked from the endless hours of screaming that had been pulled out of the very corners of his soul.

“Keith?” Krolia approached her son slowly, sitting down on the dirt next to him.

“How can he be gone, Krolia?” Keith turned to Krolia, and she could see the redness in his face, the frosted tears against his cheeks, and the sorrow in his eyes. He had been awake for some time, and he had been crying for hours. “I _saw_ him. In- in- in these visions. He’s in my future, I know it. So how can he be gone?”

“I… I don’t know, Keith. We don’t know what forces guide the Quantum Abyss. We don’t know the science behind what these visions are.” She sighed, struggling for the answers that she did not know how to provide. “What does your heart say, Keith?”

His lip trembled, and his whole body convulsed before a torrent of new tears started to stream down his face. His mind was drawn to the final thought that he had heard in his mind, the final word that his mate would leave him with before he would be so cruelly taken away:

_… goodbye._

Keith closed just eyes, and admitted what he had most feared. “That… he’s dead. Vrek’s _dead_.”

The senior Blade wrapped an arm around her son’s shoulders, and she had let him cry himself out until he finally exhausted himself and fell into a painless slumber.

  
  
  


***

  
  


Krolia grieved with her son, but her grief was ornamental at best. Her entire life had been about pushing her emotions out of her mind so that she could live _for_ the mission. 

But the universe has a way of reopening old wounds and reminding us of the sadness we had thought we had buried long ago.

The flash had come in an instant. Its wide arc of light crossing the horizon and illuminating every crevasse and cavern embedded into the side of their sailing sanctuary amongst the stars. 

Krolia braced herself, ready to glimpse into the painful past during the times she had been forced to commit atrocities for the Empire. Krolia had made mistakes- more than she could count- and the nightmarish hellscape that was forcing her to relive the procession of errors was little more than a literal manifestation of the tortured existence she already resided in.

When Krolia was bathed in the light of the Quantum Abyss- she closed her eyes and primed herself for whatever pain and regret she was sure to be reminded of. 

She opened her eyes.

Tex stood before her, a smile stretched across his face and a warmth in his demeanor that seemed more alien to Krolia than the muted tan of the human’s pale skin. Krolia slid back in time to when she had been trapped on Earth. What she was reliving wasn’t _pain…_ but it was _regret_. 

She had been with Tex for more than a few months. He had dragged her out of her fighter, tended to her wounds, and aided in her recovery until she had been strong enough to explain that the universe was convulsing in the grip of Zarkon’s malevolent reign. 

By all accounts- Tex was an idiot. She was his species’ first contact with extraterrestrial life: representing a conquering people that had made a sport of incinerating lesser worlds, and instead of alerting his people to her presence- he shielded her from it. She had no reason to be afraid. Not of this people’s ‘Galaxy Garrison’ nor of the suffocating might of the Empire. She was safe, and she trusted Tex implicitly to keep her that way.

The man was a romantic, and had the notion not been almost entirely lost on a soldier whose very existence was that of war- Krolia would have fallen for the man much sooner than she did.

But that moment was now, and as sure as gravity had pulled her fighter down to the surface of this planet, she was being pulled towards Tex by a similar invisible force… one that was just as powerful as gravity itself. Krolia acknowledged that in the time that she had spent on this rural planet in this desolate quadrant of barely-explored space, that she had developed certain _feelings_ for this human.

“Seriously? You’ve never been out dancing?” The disbelief in Tex’s voice pulled his typical drawl out to an almost comical degree. “So what do ‘Soldiers of the Empire’ do for fun in their downtime?” 

“You’re assuming we have any downtime.” Krolia sipped at the mug of coffee that she was currently nursing, warming her hands against the heat radiating from the cup in stout defiance of the cool night’s air. “I suppose… what would constitute _‘fun’_ would be our excursions to primitive planets to use the locals for target practice…”

Krolia set down her mug on the table beside her and flashed Tex a toothy grin that allowed her sharp, predatory fangs to glint in the well-lit living room. “I suppose we could have some _‘fun’_ if you wanted to run around out back. I could set my blaster to _stun_.”

“Oh no. No, no, no. I am a gentleman, and I am going to give you a proper evening. Free of any guns.” Tex ignored the way Krolia rolled her eyes, and crossed the length of the living room with a determined gait in his step, over to a small stereo sandwiched between piles of antiquated vinyl records.

After a few intentive pokes at a digital screen, the stereo began to produce a low baseline and a melodic strumming of a guitar. Tex turned back to Krolia, a delighted smile on his face as he thrust his thumb back in the direction of the…Earth _noise_.

“An Earth Classic. Band called _‘KISS’_. You don’t have to be human to appreciate these tunes.” Tex edged his way back across the living room in time with the thumping of the drums. He held his arms up and shimmied his shoulders in time with the music, and it elicited unrestrained laughter from the battle-hardened Blade. 

Even as the laughter ebbed away, the amusement remained. “I don’t know how to dance.” Krolia offered. 

“That’s fine. Neither do I.” Tex retorted, and yes- that much was _evident_ in the way he moved. “You don’t have to know how to do _anything_. Just let go.”

“Alright, Earthling.” Krolia held her hands up to Tex as if giving herself over to his incessant pestering for her to _‘have fun’_. “Show me what to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tex hoisted her to her feet, and in an instant, they were together. 

Tex wiggled his shoulders at her, and got another bark of laughter out of Krolia. In response, Krolia wiggled back in a mocking mimicry of the human’s failed attempt at poise. He laughed in turn, and it was a laughter that set Krolia’s heart ablaze with feelings she could not quite comprehend. She couldn’t help but smile. 

Their hands closed around each other, intertwining their fingers in the comforting presence of one another. Tex, finding the gentleness of the soldier that seemed afraid of intimacy; Krolia, finding the trust and tenderness of someone who was blissfully ignorant of the horrors she had witnessed. Behind them, the music played on-

_“Tonight… I wanna give it all you…”_

Their bodies inched closer together, violating the privacy of their own personal space without any reservations of what that intimacy could suggest. 

_“In the darkness… there’s so much I wanna do.”_

They swayed with one another, their bodies moving in precious harmony as they- not so much danced, but- moved together. 

_“And tonight… I wanna lay it at your feet… cuz’ girl I was made for you…”_

Tex’s hands wandered down Krolia’s sides, hesitantly grazing against the soft fabric of her oversized tank top to brush against the hard muscles that lay beneath her soft fur. 

_“... and girl you were made for me…”_

Krolia’s hands crept their way up Tex’s chest, walking their way up his body until she could rest her arms around his shoulders. 

_“... and I can’t get enough of you, baby… can you get enough of me?”_

The two were practically the same height, and when Krolia closed her eyes and leaned forward, it didn’t take much for Tex to do the same. They pressed their foreheads together, breathing deep and reveling in the closeness that had finally materialized between them.

_“Tonight… I wanna see it in your eyes…”_

They both opened their eyes, and in their proximity, they could glimpse into one another. Tex stared into the brilliant, violet iris of Krolia’s otherwise golden gaze, and Krolia fell into the deep pools of earthy brown that stared back at her. 

_“Feel the magic… there’s something that drives me wild…”_

Something blossomed deep within the both of them, repressed feelings that rose from their chests as surely as the sun rises over the desert sands. They leaned in towards one another, drawn to each other as if they were puppets whose strings were being pulled by fate itself. 

_“And tonight… we’re gonna make it all come true”_

Closer. Closer. And closer still. 

They leaned in to one another until Krolia could feel the hot breath escape from Tex’s mouth. There was a sharp inhale from the man, as if he were still attempting to fight gravity, and pull away from Krolia before he caused irreparable damage to their friendship.

  
_“Cuz girl I was made for you…”_

Friendship be damned. Krolia closed the distance, and pressed her mouth against Tex’s. His lips were soft, her pleas were needy, and their hearts wove together a web of love that had trapped both of their souls. The kiss was wonderful. It was messy, with fangs painfully clashing against teeth and tongues cautiously tasting one another; they both kissed with the fervor of inexperienced adolescents… and neither of them would have had it any other way.  
  


_“... and girl you were made for me…”_

Krolia was snapped back to the present, left wanton and heartbroken by the memories she treasured and the ghost of the touch she yearned to feel yet again. She brought her hand up to her own lips, tracing the outline of where Tex had forever left his impression upon her.

“ _Tex…_ ” The word was choked out of her before she could stop it, and like a cracked dam, all of her emotions came flooding out of her. Leaving Earth was the most painful decision she’d ever had to make, and now- every time she looked to her son, she saw the agonizing reminder of the life that she had rejected. 

She could have raised him. She could have had a family. She could have had a life beyond the pointless struggle that the Blades had insisted upon fighting. But instead, she ran. She ran away from Keith, away from Tex, and back into the arms of the Blade of Marmora. 

She bit down on her finger to silence her sobs, and she let her fangs puncture her flesh so that the physical pain would replace the emotional one she harbored. 

Keith was still asleep across the cave -unbothered by the memories that had returned to haunt her- with his wolf curled up around him. The wolf had grown in size exponentially. Whereas, once, Keith had slept with the small, scared creature carefully sheltered against the hollow of his chest- now, that same animal now curled around Keith as if Keith were the one in need of sheltering. 

The wolf was wide awake, and its undivided focus was set upon Krolia. Its eyes stared into the depths of Krolia’s soul with a penetrating awareness of the hurt that tormented Krolia’s heart. The wolf was intelligent, and even if verbal communication was a hurdle they could not overcome, it’s actions and understanding of the situation was not hindered by its own quadruped existence. 

It was strange to stare back upon the cosmic wolf; the wolf glared at her as if expecting an answer from her, unflinching in its demands that her actions required explanation. 

“I… I didn’t _want_ to leave. But I _had to_ …” Krolia’s voice was carried by a whisper. On any other day, justifying her actions to what would seem to be an animal would have been a ridiculous notion, but now, isolated from existence and desperately seeking a connection with the only two beings she still had in her life. It was almost pitiful. 

The wolf huffed at her, turning away and resting its head back next to Keith’s in utter dismissal of Krolia’s defense. It knew that she was lying, even if Krolia was ignorant to the fact that she had been lying to herself.

Krolia couldn’t stand the contempt that the animal was showing her, and she couldn’t bear the presence of the son that was the constant reminder of all of her deepest regrets.

She needed to clear her head, and so- Krolia did what she’s always done: she walked away.

Each footstep that carried her further away from their home.

Each footstep brought forth the tactile memories from years ago. She didn’t need the Quantum Abyss to trap her in her own regrets, there were some memories that were just too painful to forget. 

_“Please don’t go.”_ It was Tex’s voice. Krolia closed her eyes, shutting them tight against the revenant words that she tortured herself with. Tex wasn’t here. And she wasn’t on Earth. But regardless, she was still haunted by what had come to pass. _“Don’t leave me. Don’t leave your son.”_

 _“But I have to. This is for you both. I need to get back in the fight. I’ve been gone long enough as it is.”_ Krolia remembered every lie, and she wished she could turn back time and take it all back. 

_“I know that the war is happening. But it’s happening out there.”_ Tex was holding Keith, still an infant, cradled in his arms. _“Can’t you just stay with us?”_

_“Tex… I’m a soldier.”_

_“You told me that children were important to the Galra. You told me that becoming a parent can redefine who you are…”_ Keith cooed in Tex’s arms, and Tex glanced down at their son before returning his gaze back to her. _“Let it. Let it redefine you. Don’t let war control who you are.”_

Keith started to stir, and it took every ounce of control in her not to rush to his side and comfort him. _No._ She couldn’t waver. She had made her decision. Her war would not become her son’s war. 

_“This is what I can do. This is how I can protect you.”_ Krolia’s fist tightened around her helmet, her eyes drifting away from her mate’s to scratch at the surface of truth hiding beneath her words. _“War is all I know. I don’t know how to be a mother…”_

Tex reached out to her, and she recoiled from his touch- afraid that the gentlest of embraces would shatter the faith she was placing in her actions. 

_“Krolia, this is new to me, too. But I’m willing to try, damnit.”_ He reached out again, and this time, Krolia let her face be held in his hand. _“We’ll learn together. You just have to stay.”_

Krolia reached up to her face, resting her own hand against Tex’s. She let herself bathe in the love he had for her. She let herself feel one last time, before she pulled his hand away from her face. _“Goodbye, Tex.”_

She pulled away, letting each footstep carry her further away from her home. She didn’t dare look back: she didn’t dare see the look of heartbreak on her mate’s face, she didn’t dare see the look of confusion on her son’s face, and she didn’t dare look back at the life she was leaving behind. 

Leaving that small, blue planet was the most difficult decision she’d ever have to make. She’d missed the death of her love and she’d missed the life of her son. She didn’t know if she could do anything to reconcile her relationship with her son- but he was all she had left.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Keith woke in the dead of night, feeling just as hollow and broken as he had been when he had fallen asleep. Now, moreso- as the realization dawned on him that he will have to live with this anguish for the remainder of his miserable existence. Keith’s heart had splintered like shattered glass, and was in danger of crumbling beneath the strain of every unwanted heartbeat. 

Krolia was nowhere to be found, gone again for one of her leisurely midnight strolls. Beside him, the giant cosmic wolf still slumbered, its massive form shielding Keith from the cold. The wolf was loyal, and it wanted nothing more than for Keith to feel safe, but the pain that was consuming Keith’s soul was not a pain that the wolf could protect him from.

Keith pulled away from the safety of the soft fur that was warming him, leaving the giant beast to its dreamscape as Keith fetched his blade and ventured out into the vast of night. The frigid air did little to deter Keith as he took slow, measured steps out of the mouth of the cave they called home. 

The wintry night froze every lingering breath that left Keith’s lungs- hanging in the cool night air like words left unspoken. He should have felt cold, but Keith didn’t feel a thing. 

His legs carried him forward, propelling him with a purpose that he couldn’t quite place. As his body wandered, his mind was still preoccupied with the thought of what he had lost. Keith walked until he could no longer see the warm hue of light generated by the fire of their den. Keith walked until he was just as lost as his mate was to him.

When Keith finally stopped walking, he found himself on the shores of the crystalline lake. 

“Vrek…?” It escaped Keith’s mouth like a question posed to the universe itself, but Keith was unable to fill the void that was left in the wake of his mate’s name. There were too many questions to ask, and yet Keith couldn’t find the strength nor the resolve to bring himself to say anything at all. 

He wanted to ask…

_… Why am I alone?_

_… How long will I have to feel like this?_

_… How long will I have to live with this pain?_

The answer to his last two questions was one that he had already known, one that he had simply refused to acknowledge until now. But he knew that the answer to his question was…

_… forever._

Keith tightened his grip around the hilt of his knife, his other hand wrapping around the sharp edge of the blade and squeezing until a sick scarlet started to seep between his fingers. It should have stung, but Keith didn’t feel a thing. 

His vision started to blur, and tears started to fill his eyes as a different question burned it’s way through his heart and slithered it’s way into the forefront of Keith’s grieving mind…

_You promised. Why did you break your promise?_

Keith closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the memories he had with his mate. He didn’t want to be alone again. He didn’t want to feel broken again. Keith wished desperately that he could be whisked away to the past he had with Vrek in order to avoid the present he suffered without him, and for once- the universe obliged. 

Keith was washed in the bright light that pulsed out from the center of the Quantum Abyss, and in an instant... 

... He found himself back on Karrahe, ascending the side of the cavern wall within the relaxation pools that Vrek had brought him to so long ago. Vrek was above him, just out of arm's reach, already having climbed up to the main room that Keith was working towards. Keith was already exhausted, tired from their strenuous sessions of intimacy within the privacy of this romantic setting. The cave wall was damp, and his human anatomy didn’t lend itself to the climb quite as well as his more Galra bond mate. He slipped, and the moment of panic only registered after the feeling of weightlessness took hold of him. Keith looked down, and the 10 meters that separated him from solid ground seemed to stretch on endlessly. The fall wouldn’t kill him, but it had the potential to seriously injure him.

A furred grip seized his arm before he could plummet back down to the rocks below, and when Keith looked back up, he saw the reassurance in the golden eyes of his mate.

“I gotcha!” Vrek’s grasp held firm on Keith, and Keith closed his fingers around his mate’s forearm in response. “I’ll always catch you, Keith.”

Keith was still dangling against the side of a cliff face, but now, he was no longer afraid of the fall below him. 

Keith smiled at Vrek, and Vrek smiled back. “Promise?”

“I promise.” Vrek’s words were as confident as his grip on Keith’s arm. He would never let go.

Reality faded back in around Keith, and he was left standing at the edge of a lake with his arm outstretched to reach for the mate that was both right there... and long gone. As the water of the lake lapped gently against his boots, tears started to flow freely down his cheeks as he struggled in vain to blink them out of his eyes.

“You _promised…_ ” The words were carried on a whisper, as if they could still echo off of the walls of the cave he had just found himself in, so long ago. 

“YOU PROMISED!” 

Keith’s arm fell back to his side as he cast his frustration upon a dead man. His breath hitched in his throat as if every sharp inhale was lost before the oxygen could reach his lungs. Keith sucked in a pained breath and let the strain burn in his chest. 

He started to wade into the icy water of the lake- his strides undeterred by the hypothermic temperatures that slowly crept up his body as step after step took him deeper towards the waiting abyss. The water was freezing, but Keith didn’t feel a thing.

Blade in hand, Keith stared down at the glowing luxite in his grasp, pointing the sharpened edge in towards his stomach. By now, the action seemed all but ceremonial- as he was already well-acquainted with the agony that would follow. 

_It would be so easy._ The thought festered in his mind, and in his solitude he could find no counter-argument.

“... you _promised…_ ” 

He shut his eyes tight, blocking out the rest of his pitiful existence as he focused only on the pain that was heralded by the emptiness in his chest. But he could put a stop to the emptiness. He could end the pain himself. _I don’t want to have to fight any more._

Keith pressed the tip of his blade against his stomach, clenching his teeth as the phantom pains of Vrek’s death swelled inside of him. Keith’s flurry of emotions were pounding against his own dwindling sense of self-preservation; the hurricane that was his heartache was crashing against the poorly barricaded doors that led to the storm room of his mind. _I could just… let go._

In the back of his mind, he could hear his mate’s voice- urging him, _begging_ him…

_… Be strong and be brave…_

He shook the words out of his mind, redoubling the grip on the hilt of his knife as he argued with the ghost of a promise. 

“I’m not as strong as you think, Vrek…”

Keith bit his tongue to steady his breathing, preventing himself from descending into a mess of tears that would have rendered speech impossible. 

“I’m not brave enough…”

His blade pressed against his suit, the fabric straining against the persistence of pointed luxite. 

“I… I can’t do this… without you…”

The Quantum Abyss had shown him the future: it was a future filled with more pain, and it was not a future that Keith would think would be worth living.

  
  
  


***

  
  


Krolia returned to their humble abode to find Keith’s beast pacing back and forth near the fire, his nose pressed to the ground as whimpers unbefitting for such a massive creature filled the stillness of the air. If the beast was this concerned, it could mean but one thing.

_No._

Flashes and fears of what could be her son’s final actions prompted Krolia to move with all the speed that she could muster as she raced towards the treeline in the direction that carried Keith’s bootprints. 

She ran. 

She stumbled.

She fell. 

She got up.

Keith was the only thing that she had left, and the decades-long resolve that she had held -that her absence from his life had saved him- dissolved quicker than a sigh upon a pane of glass. She couldn’t lose him. Not again. 

Her footsteps carried her to the edge of the lake a fair distance from their home. When she laid eyes upon her son- an immense weight was lifted from her shoulders. However, her relief was short-lived, as her eyes refocused on the blade, _her_ blade, slowly being pressed against Keith’s midsection. 

“KEITH!” Krolia’s plea was desperate. She rushed into the water, wincing at the freezing temperatures that immediately shocked every nerve-ending she had. She needed to get to him, she needed to stop him, she couldn’t lose him too, she couldn’t take another loss in her life.

Her son’s eyes shot open as if the water had been electrified. He stared down at the knife in his hands, neither pulling it away nor pushing it further. He was paralyzed in his indecision, too afraid to live and yet too afraid to die.

Krolia made no move for the knife, instead, she stopped behind Keith and wrapped her arms around his chest in an embrace so warm and tight that they could forget the freezing lake around them. 

“I couldn’t say _goodbye_ to him, Krolia…” The tears streaming down Keith’s face dripped off his chin and impacted on the blade in his hands. “... he’s gone now and I couldn’t even say _goodbye_.”

Keith was hyperventilating, his labored breathing depriving him of the illusion of peace as he struggled to steady his frantically beating heart. 

“... it’s… it’s just like _dad_. I couldn’t say _goodbye_.” His eyes closed. His head fell. He lowered the blade to his side. 

“ _Keith…_ ” Krolia knew that Keith’s agony was unendurable, and she wanted nothing more than to take that burden from him. But she was at a complete loss for either the words or the actions that could provide any form of comfort to her son. 

“IT’S NOT FAIR!” Keith screamed. 

The sudden outburst nearly made Krolia jump, but instead, she tightened her grip on her son. 

“M- Maybe… maybe I could have helped him…” Keith clenched his jaw, biting back the pain in a feeble attempt to fight off the sadness with anger. “I could have saved him… but instead, I’m here.”

Keith ripped himself out of Krolia’s grasp, shambling forward a few more steps into the depths of the lake before turning and pointing an accusatory finger back towards his fellow Blade. 

“What the FUCK am I even doing here, _Krolia?!_ This wasn’t a part of my mission!” The words were incendiary, but the fire in his eyes was immediately doused by the tears that drowned them out. He couldn’t fight his sadness, no matter how hard he tried. “I’m not supposed to be _here…_ I should’ve been with him...”

Krolia didn’t make a move towards her son, worried that any sudden movements might startle him and drive him further away. 

“I’m sorry, Keith.” She knew that words were but a meager reparation for the damage she had inadvertently caused her in son’s life. But it was all she had. “I’m so sorry… there’s a lot I have to apologize for, and I don’t know how to make any of it better.”

She opened her arms to him: an offer. 

Keith took reluctant steps towards her, hesitantly accepting her offer and falling victim to his merciless heartache. Krolia was a poor emotional substitute for Vrek, for Shiro, for his father… but she was the only one here, and Keith needed _someone_. It had been too long since someone last held him.

They moved back to the shoreline, settling down in the sand near the water’s edge as Krolia continued to hold her son. They stayed like this for hours, with neither of them wanting to break the commiserating embrace that tethered them to reality and to each other. 

Eventually, Keith found the courage to speak. “What now? What do we do now?”

Krolia let one of her hands lace through Keith’s silk black hair, the nostalgia of the action reminding her of both the happiness she had when Keith had been born- and of the regret she possessed for all the moments she had missed. “Ulaz asked me that once. He asked me- _‘What do we do now? What is it we’re doing as Blades?’_ ”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him…” She closed her eyes, drawing upon the memories of her youth- and of the disenchantment that she had suffered from before the war had grinded her hopes down into the cynicism that now defined her. “... That we will build a new world, a _better world_ , upon the rubble of the old one. That we will have to be _better_.”

Keith’s eyes fell once more, focusing on the soft tides that brushed against the shore. “I can’t do this alone.”

“But you’re not _alone_ , Keith. Every Blade that draws breath is a brother -or sister- that you will have to rely on. The bonds that tie us together as a family are what have kept our order alive for so long.” 

He took her answer, and allowed the notion a few scant minutes to settle in his thoughts before he could choke out, “I just miss him… I miss him _so much_.”

“I know you do, Keith.” Krolia could feel her son shivering in her grasp. She tried to warm him as best she could, but his trembling wasn’t caused by the cold. ”He’ll always be a part of you. Just as you were once a part of him.” 

Keith’s arms were crossed across his own chest, as if he were shielding his heart from everyone else in the universe, Krolia included. One of Keith’s hands drifted upwards, his fingers covering the circle of scars that were the remnants of the bond now broken. “But what do I do with this… with this _pain?”_

His mother removed her arms from around his chest, taking his hand off of his shoulder and closing his fingers into a fist of which she then held between her clawed grasp. “You take that pain, and you hold it tight. You squeeze it until it hurts...”

Krolia tilted her head up, her gaze pointing up towards the stars. She continued, “You tell yourself that you will feel this pain so that no one else will have to. You tell yourself that the losses that you bear will be but the final casualties of this war.” 

Keith stared at his fist, focusing on the emptiness that he held in his hand. “But I have _nothing_ left…” 

“Oh, _Keith…_ ” Krolia pulled him back against her chest, doing her best to envelop her son in the love that she could offer. She placed a knuckle under Keith’s chin, and tilted his head back so that he too could gaze upon the infinite with her. “You have what you’ve always had. You have what Vrek would’ve wanted you to have…”

  
  
  


“... you have _tomorrow_.”  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artist Credit: @greenerghosty on Twitter/ tumblr/ and Instagram
> 
> Welcome back to everyone who was a fan of "The Blades and the Bees" and "In the Back of Our Mind"!  
> Thank you SO VERY MUCH for sticking with me on this journey and I can only hope that I continue to engage you as best as I can!
> 
> I'm not going to lie, this story is going to be a little rough. Keith is hurting, and he's going to be hurting for a while. He needs to hit rock-bottom before he can climb out of this stronger than before. 
> 
> I sincerely hope that you're all just as excited to see what happens from here on out- this story has been a completely different beast compared to "In the Back of Our Mind"- it's bigger, it's more dramatic, there are much more moving parts... there is quite a lot that I have in store for you all, and I sincerely hope that you are just as excited as I am. In the time since I started writing "In the Back of Our Mind", I feel as if my skills as a writer have improved, and I am very hopeful that these improvements show- and that I'm able to deliver you a compelling tale for our beloved Red Paladin and his tragic love-life. 
> 
> OKAY. I left a lot in this chapter for you all to unpack and to speculate on! What did you think? What do you think of Krolia? As always, PLEASE let me know in the comments below! Your engagement truly helps encourage me to keep on writing, and I always love the interaction!


	2. Damage Dealt Unto Others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Black Paladins.

Luxite bounced off hard-light: Keith’s Marmora blade clashing against the vibrant amethyst of Shiro’s bladed fist. 

Keith swung at Shiro, sword in hand, with his right. Shiro deflected the blow, but as Keith’s blade rebounded off of the solid energy, he was already countering with his left. 

A jab towards Shiro’s jaw. It should have connected, but Shiro was always fast.

Shiro curled his forearm under Keith’s, guiding his chaotically thrown fist under his arm and trapping it there with his mechanical bicep. He braced his hand underneath Keith’s elbow and shoved forward, forcing Keith’s shoulder out of its socket with a sickening _‘POP’_. 

“ _AAAAAAAAH-!”_ Keith gave a hideous scream, doing his best to choke back the pain. Pain was something that Keith was used to, something he was intimately familiar with, and compared to what he had already endured, this was nothing. 

With his left fist still trapped, he brought his right down to bear upon Shiro’s face. The hilt of Keith’s sword impacted against the bridge of Shiro’s nose, and Shiro instantly brought his free hand to clutch at the blood pouring out of his surely broken nose. 

Shiro took a step back, pivoting his foot and hurling Keith over his shoulder by his dislocated arm.

Keith was thrown haphazardly towards the edge of the platform, his back hitting the railing and his momentum carrying him over the edge. He was hurtling down towards the level below them, careening through the thin atmosphere without any ability to orient himself to the surface below. 

He fired the thrusters on his jetpack once, a desperate gamble to slow his descent before he ended up a smear against the unforgiving metal. He was slammed back down onto solid ground, and while he was left gasping for breath as the impact had stolen the air from his lungs, he was otherwise uninjured.

His fingers clawing against the metal grates that supported him, Keith pushed himself up into a standing position, stumbling forward as he recovered from his hard landing. The dull throbbing in Keith’s dislocated arm was persistent. He tested his grip, creating a pathetic excuse for a fist with his left hand. He tried to move his arm, and was met with a sharp fire trailing through his muscles at even the slightest of movements. He couldn’t fight like this. 

Keith shambled his way over to one of the sturdy-looking support columns within this nightmare of a facility. With one hand resting against the nearest railing, he positioned his injured shoulder squarely in line with the column of steel, and when he feathered the boost button on his jetpack, the force carried him off of his feet and straight into the solid metal. With a resounding _‘CRACK’_ , and an excruciating amount of pain, Keith was able to reset his shoulder.

He tested his grip once more: still weak, but there was a noticeable improvement. He stretched his arm out: still painful, but manageable. _This fight isn’t over yet._

The humming of Shiro’s hard-light blade alerted Keith to the danger that was zeroing in on him. He ducked, narrowly avoiding the purple energy that cut through the air above him. If he hadn’t moved, Shiro’s blade would have relieved him of his _head_. 

Keith had been pulling his punches, fighting to subdue- and not to harm; but Shiro was not bound by those constraints. Shiro was aiming to kill. 

Keith could barely keep up with the frenetic pace that Shiro was setting- Shiro swung his sword at Keith, flailing his bladed fist at him in wild movements that were meant to maim.

Their blades connected, the sizzling energy of Shiro’s hard-light causing the sturdy luxite of Keith’s sword to head under the constant assault. They pushed and pulled at each other’s weapon, each of them making a bid to guide the direction of the other’s blade. Keith took a step forward, shoving his blade against Shiro’s and causing the pointed tips of their swords to pierce through some of the glass pods that surrounded them. 

Shiro used his free hand to throw his fist between their crossed swords, breaking Keith’s nose in what was sure to be righteous recompense for having done the same to him earlier. Keith staggered backwards in shock, but their blades stayed locked together regardless.

But the punch had disoriented Keith enough for Shiro to gain the upper hand on the situation, and Shiro swung his sword around and down, using the force to wrench Keith’s sword free from his hands.

Keith’s eyes followed his blade as it skittered to a halt down on the adjacent catwalk. But the fight at hand summoned his attention once more, with a flash of purple light advancing towards him out of his peripheral vision. Keith dodged Shiro’s attack, and countered with one of his own, bringing his fist up into the Black Paladin’s chiseled jaw in an uppercut that sent the man staggering backwards. 

Keith had but precious seconds before Shiro recovered, and he used those seconds to chase after his weapon. He hopped down off of the platform, taking quick, jumping strides to cross an entire staircase in two leaping bounds. When he reached his blade, he collected the knife off of the ground and immediately readied himself for the titan that was pursuing him.

Shiro announced his presence with a ferocious scream that accompanied his next attack, as he thrust his dagger-like arm straight towards Keith. He blocked it with the flat of his sword, but the Red Paladin was pushed backwards by the sheer force of the attack- his back connecting with a delicate control panel. 

Keith dove under Shiro’s arm, scrambling out of arm’s reach as the panel behind him exploded, causing a malfunction to spread through the pods that surrounded them. Panels sparked, pods ignited, and soon enough the narrow platform that was their battleground was obscured by a hailfire of flaming debris. 

Now a fair distance away from the Black Paladin, Keith was given the moment’s reprieve to elevate their actions into words.

“Shiro! I know you’re in there!” He needed to get through to his friend. Somewhere deep inside this opponent he was facing, there was a man that he loved. “You made a promise once.”

Memories of a much simpler time burned back through Keith’s mind: a time where Keith’s only opponent were the cruel words of Cadet Griffin, and when his heartache was limited to that of a mother not known, and of a father taken too soon. “You told me you’d never give up on me!”

“And I should’ve abandoned you just like your parents did.” Shiro’s words clawed at Keith’s heart like a rabid dog. “They saw that you were _broken_.” 

The pang of every syllable crashed through Keith’s being and rattled his very soul. “ _Worthless_.” 

What hurt most, was the truth behind every word that cut Keith to his very core. “I should have seen it too.”

It burned Keith to look into the eyes of the only man left for him in this universe. The demonic glow of his pupils indicative of some form of sick programming at the hands of a sadist. This wasn’t Shiro, he _knew_ that, but the words hurt all the same. 

“I…” Keith pooled together all the resolve he could, never taking his eyes off of the imposter that stood before him. “I’m not leaving you.”

“ _Poor_ Keith. So afraid to _let go_. So unwilling to _move on_.” He chuckled, and the shadow of the man he loved taunted him, “But something’s different about you. Who else did you lose? An ally? Another friend? A _lover_ , perhaps?”

Fists clenching as tight as his jaw, Keith found himself fighting a battle on two fronts- desperately trying to hold back the tears that were making their way to his eyes. “I’ll never give up on you either, Shiro."

“So that was it, then? Keith finally found himself a fuck-buddy...” Shiro pushed his way past the flaming debris, clearing his path of obstacles as he stalked his way closer to his opponent, circling his prey like a tiger inspecting their kill. “What happened to them? Did they get wise and leave you behind, too?”

Shiro advanced, with every step closing the distance between the two Paladins, “I left for Kerberos _because_ of you. You and your pitiful _‘do you love me’_ complex. I needed to get away from you. I couldn’t _stand_ you.” The violent, violet energy ignited from the mechanical fist once more, with the shade of Shiro dragging the tip of his hard-light against the reflective, metal surface of the catwalk, the panels melting and tearing beneath the beam of light. “ _Maybe_ they couldn’t stand you either, Keith. _Maybe_ you drove them away. _Maybe_ they’ll be so much happier without you…”

Shiro came to a stop, a twisted smile contorting his face into something sinister, “And _maybe_ you know… deep down… that they’re better off without you.”

“NO!” 

Something inside of Keith broke, and all of his repressed anguish acted as gasoline for the fires of his anger. His emotions unshackled, Keith let himself _feel_ for the first time in ages, and what he felt… was _rage_. 

Keith’s luxite extended in his hand, the upwards swing of his sword scraping against the floor and sending sparks up in the air towards Shiro. 

The Black Paladin instinctively covered his face to shield himself from the sudden and harsh light, and in the instant that he had taken his eyes off of his opponent, Keith was on him. Keith swung his sword against Shiro’s blade, hitting the hard-light with enough energy to shatter the beam of energy in a single strike. 

Shiro retreated, flailing at Keith with his cybernetic arm and making frantic jabs that only connected with air. The Red Paladin ducked and weaved his way under each of Shiro’s strikes- turning, twisting, and switching the grip on his sword behind his back so that Shiro was robbed of the reaction time he needed to see Keith’s impending attacks. His sword danced around him, swimming through the air with the elegance and precision that he had learned from someone else’s mind.

Keith’s side-stepped around Shiro’s defensive stance, snaking his way behind the Paladin’s reach and locking his leg against the back of Shiro’s knee. Before Keith could register the actions his own body was making, he had gripped Shiro’s throat in his hand, using all of his forward might to knock the larger man off of his balance and to pin him to the floor. 

All the air was kicked out of Shiro’s lungs as his back was slammed against the ground. Dazed and winded, he barely had him enough time to catch the sword that was being thrust towards his throat.

Keith pressed the edge of his sword up against Shiro’s neck, ready to spill red scarlet across clean, white armor. Keith’s mind was consumed by anger, his thoughts clouded to reason, his body moving as if on autopilot: no longer seeing the friend he loved and instead only seeing an obstacle of which to remove. He growled in annoyance as Shiro’s grip trapped the blade of his sword. Keith transformed his sword back into its more compact knife-form and twisted the sharpened edge in Shiro’s hand, slicing off a mechanical thumb in order to free his weapon and give him another opportunity to end this battle. 

Shiro held his hand up, and before the tip of his knife could make contact with the soft, yielding flesh of the Black Paladin’s throat, Keith again found his blade stopped. Shiro sacrificed what remained of his robotic hand to prevent a lethal blow. Sleek luxite sheared through rigid metal, stopping only when the hilt connected with the palm of Shiro’s hand. 

Keith snarled at Shiro, a sound befitting that of a feral animal, maw-gaping, eyes-wild and ready for the kill. He leaned against his blade, putting the weight of his body behind the force of his attack and driving the blade closer and closer towards Shiro’s skin. 

“That’s… the Keith… I remember…” Shiro’s words were strained, choked out of him by the vice grip that Keith still had around his throat. 

Keith’s eyes darted to his reflection in the metal floor next to Shiro’s face. 

He didn’t recognize himself. His fangs were bared at Shiro and, in this reflection- towards himself. His eyes morphed themselves into something more inhuman- with the Galran gold of his heritage bleeding into the last vestiges of his humanity. 

Keith’s horrified gaze drifted down, until he was acutely aware of the life he was currently choking out of his opponent… of… _his friend_. Keith’s fingers had torn through the fabric of his gloves, his nails sharpening into predatory claws, with the tips of each of these razor-sharp digits pressed against Shiro’s exposed throat, with the ends of his fingers now dyed red in the small pools of blood that his talons had created beneath their pointed pressure. Slowly and reluctantly, Keith’s control returned to him along with his cognizance, and his grip on Shiro’s throat faltered as surely as the grip he had had on his own humanity. 

“You should join the Empire…” Shiro coughed as the air returned to his lungs, “They could always use another blood-thirsty killer.”

“I… I’m not…” Keith was terrified of himself: not only terrified of the abomination staring back at him through his reflection, but terrified of how easily he had slipped into something he was not. The volatility roiling beneath the surface of his humanity was but a mere facade, disguising the monster that lurked beneath his skin.

Prisoner to his own nightmares, Keith was oblivious to Shiro’s retaliation until it was almost too late. Shiro’s mangled, mechanical hand hummed to life, an incandescent energy starting to crackle around the blade that was still buried in the palm of his hand.

Keith pulled his knife out of Shiro’s hand and rolled backwards off of the Black Paladin a fraction of a second before an arc of superheated plasma erupted from the hole in his mutilated appendage. 

Its power unregulated, the energy that had previously formed Shiro’s hard-light sword fired outwards like a cannon, singing Keith’s hair and melting the platform above them. 

By the time Keith’s had rolled to his feet, the Black Bayard had apparated in Shiro’s grasp, forming a broadsword of which its Paladin used to swipe madly at him.

The first attack connected, with the sharpened point of the Bayard grazing the front of Keith’s chest. Keith could spare but a cursory glance, his fingers brushing at the newly formed gash to be sure that the armor had absorbed the strike and that he himself was not bleeding. 

But every time that he successfully deflected the edge of a Bayard, he found himself staring straight down Shiro’s unstable arm-cannon. Keith stepped into Shiro’s range of attack, catching the mechanical wrist in his hands and pointing the beam weapon straight down at the platform that they were standing on.

The energy that was discharged melted the floor below them, and the two Paladins once again found themselves falling down towards the next platform, descending the levels of this installation as if traversing the six rings of hell. 

The two crashed against the narrow catwalk that was below them, not taking a moment for themselves to recover before they were at odds once more. Keith flung his arm in Shiro’s direction, it was an attack made out of desperation: more to allow himself breathing room than to find akin to an actual attack.

Shiro shoved aside the wild attack, using Keith’s own momentum to expose his unguarded back and controlling the direction of Keith’s body as if he were a dog being led on a leash. He kicked in the back of Keith’s knee, causing the Red Paladin to drop to the floor, presented to him as if awaiting his own execution. 

Shiro brought the might of his corrupted Bayard down to bear on the young Paladin.

Keith canted forward, the edge of Shiro’s Bayard missing his neck and instead clipping his back. The Bayard cut through Keith’s jetpack, igniting the small pack of fuel stored within the thrusters and causing the pack to explode; Shiro was driven backwards from the sheer concussive force having been detonated directly in his face. Still protected by his Paladin armor, the explosion did little damage to Keith, but the sacrifice of his maneuverability would be sorely missed.

Keith crawled himself to the edge of the platform, unable to find the strength to stand or the will to continue fighting. He dragged himself over the side, letting himself fall the three meters down to what appeared to be the final level of this station- below that, only a satellite dish-type structure, suspended over the moon of which they orbited by a collection of cables. Keith turned his gaze to the walkway above him, his eyes focusing on the outline of Shiro as the Black Paladin readied his arm cannon at him once more.

_Get up_. A voice in the back of Keith’s mind begged him. 

And Keith got up. 

_Run_ , it pleaded.

Keith ran.

The spot of which Keith had just occupied was incinerated moments after it had been evacuated. The brilliant indigo of an overcharged power source burned through the air and chased Keith as he thoughtlessly obeyed the persistent voice in his mind that was urging him towards self-preservation. He was fast approaching the end of the platform, leaving him with only two options: either to jump to the circular structure below, or to turn and face Shiro’s destructive power.

The dish below was far, approximately 12 meters down and god-knows how far apart from where he’d be jumping from, and without a functioning jetpack, Keith questioned whether or not it would be possible to even make that jump. But what choice did he have?

_Jump_ , the voice told him.

Keith jumped.

He sailed through the air, arms and legs flailing as he fell. 

9 meters away.

The dish was getting closer, but still seemed impossibly out of reach. 

5 meters away. 

He could make it. He just needed to get a _little_ further. 

2 meters away. 

He wasn’t going to make it.

His feet didn’t hit the edge of the structure like he had hoped. He had missed it, and time slowed to a crawl as his fingers barely grazed the side of the metal platform that was his destination, as if mocking his futile efforts to prolong his pitiful existence. Keith looked down towards the white surface of the moon below, where he would fall… inevitably, to his death.

  
  


But Keith didn’t fall. 

_I gotcha!_

The words rang in his mind so clearly and so loudly it was as if they had been shouted out at him, accompanied by a familiar, furred grip around his forearm. Keith’s descent towards the planet halted abruptly, and he looked back up towards the platform that he had so surely missed, only to see...

“... _Vrek?”_

The strain on his mate’s face was apparent, his fangs bared in the effort to pull Keith back up until he could feel his fingers brush against the metal corners of solid ground. Vrek was _here_ , and he had saved Keith _again_. 

Keith stared up into the reassuring eyes of his mate’s golden gaze, barely able to scrape together any of the million things he wanted to say. 

“... _how?”_ Is what ended up squeaking out of his throat. 

_I’ll always catch you, Keith. I promised._ The thoughts surged through him, filling the lonely void in the back of his mind.

An explosion from within the facility above blinded him, and Keith reactively closed his eyes against the blast. When he opened them, there was no Vrek. Keith searched for any lingering traces of the love that had just been here, to no avail. Keith wasn’t being held in the safety of his mate’s grasp, he was clutching the side of the platform that he had thought eluded him. Yet as he pulled himself up onto the rounded structure, Keith rolled on to his back and racked his brain for answers that it could not provide.

 _It couldn’t have been Vrek_. His chest heaved as he attempted to will air back into his lungs against the strained atmosphere at the edge of this facility. _Could it?_

Before he could allow himself a second to ponder the actuality of the events that had just occurred, the distinctive _“FWWWSH”_ of a jetpack alerted Keith to the danger that he was still in. 

Keith pulled his sword up to block the most expected attack, and no sooner did he do so did he find Shiro’s boots landing on either side of him, with the crackling hard-light of an unstable sword fizzling against his luxite. The glowing edge of Shiro’s malfunctioning weapon crackled and popped, electricity surging through the unstable sword as it tried to maintain its form after Keith had butchered it.

“Shiro, please!” The feelings beneath Keith’s crumbling resolve were unearthed, and before he could retreat back into himself -before he could bury his feelings once more- Keith spoke the words that were long overdue. “I LOVE YOU!”

Shiro’s eyes widened, and the merciless exterior of the monster that had been so intent on ending Keith’s life faded away, receding with the tide as if called back to the depths from whence he came.

The force behind Shiro’s sword lessened, with Keith’s own straining muscles being spared from the building pressure that had been placed behind the weight of his blade.

A very gentle, human touch reached up towards the Red Paladin, and Keith all but melted into the palm that was now caressing his cheek. The touch was warm, even through Shiro’s glove, and Keith tried desperately to chase the compassion that grazed against his skin as Shiro’s hand wandered across the curve of his face to weave its way through his ink-black hair. 

“... _Shiro…_ ”

Shiro’s fingers tangled their way through Keith’s hair, and Keith breathed a sigh of relief at having broken through the programming that had robbed Shiro of his will. 

But the relief was short-lived.

The grip in Keith’s hair tightened as Shiro fisted handfuls of his hair and violently yanked Keith’s face back towards the humming edge of his bladed fist. The force behind Shiro’s sword was redoubled, and the strangled cry that Keith let out from his throat was soon soothed by the sadistic reassurances of the man he loved. 

“Just _let go_ , Keith…” The bite that was behind Shiro’s earlier scathing remarks had all but vanished, and the affection that was now laced within his words was now clear. It made the coldness of what he was saying all the more frightening. “You don’t have to fight anymore.”

Keith’s face was being pulled towards Shiro’s sword, the energy from the weapon burning the very air between them. “You’ve suffered enough. Let me _help_ you.”

The tears that started to flood the edges of Keith’s eyes blurred his vision, as Shiro’s words echoed the sentiments that he had felt mere days ago. Krolia had stopped him from putting an end to his own life, forcing Keith to live beneath the crushing weight of his own heavy heart. It wasn’t fair- it wasn’t her decision to make for him. He didn’t want to have to live with this pain any more, and Shiro was offering him a way out. 

“It’ll be quick. It can be over…” Shiro’s hold tightened as he pulled Keith’s face closer to the superheated plasma, until the heat emanating from the blade itself started to burn his flesh, creating a triangular pattern in Keith’s cheek that looked almost like his mother’s Galran markings. The sizzle of searing skin made them both wince, Keith from the pain, and Shiro from the prolonged torment. At this point, he didn’t want Keith to suffer, he just wanted this to be _over_. “Just _stop fighting_. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

Words escaped Keith’s mouth in a soft whimper, “I can’t…” _do this_ , silent thoughts completed the spoken sentences. 

“I can’t…” _Hold on._

“I can’t…” _Live without you._

He closed his eyes, and started to loosen his grip on his sword. 

_Yes you can._ The thoughts that filled the emptiness in the back of his mind did not belong to him, and the strength that returned to his limbs was not entirely his. His fists tightened around the hilt of his sword. 

_You can do this, Keith. You have to do this._ He started to push the blade away from him, and inch by inch- the burning violet of Shiro’s bladed fist started to drift further and further away. 

_Be brave, Keith. For me._

With a piercing cry, Keith pushed with all of his might, and Shiro’s hold on him buckled. 

Keith pushed Shiro’s blade a fair distance away from his face, giving him the space necessary to plant his heel firmly against Shiro’s chest. He kicked, using all of his effort to throw Shiro over himself, eliminating the advantage he had gained by pinning Keith to the ground. 

As Shiro tumbled to a stop, Keith jumped to his feet- his stance low, his feet well-distanced apart, blade in hand, and both arms raised in a ready position. It was a position that was all too familiar… one that would have been complimented nicely by his mate at his side with his hand resting against his shoulder. But, if Keith were to close his eyes, he could almost feel Vrek’s presence with him still. 

“Why won’t you just _die…_?” Shiro growled out through clenched teeth, the Black Bayard once again materializing in his human hand. 

Shiro charged at Keith, thrusting the broadsword-like form of the Black Bayard out in front of him and sprinting towards Keith.

Keith allowed himself to take a deep breath, focusing his mind until the soft rumblings of the Black Lion could be heard from the very depths of his heart. He reached out into the bond he had with his lion, connecting with the very essence of the ancient and impossible machine, until the Black Bayard disappeared from Shiro’s grasp…

… And reappeared in his own. 

Already committed to the attack, and his momentum still carrying him forwards, Shiro instead thrust his unstable mechanical arm out towards Keith. It was a move made out of desperation, and one that Keith was ready for.

Keith crossed his Marmora blade over the edge of the Black Bayard, creating an ‘X’ with the sharpened edges and allowing Shiro’s outstretched arm to slide into its clutches. When Shiro’s robotic arm passed through the blades, Keith pulled at the Bayard and his sword, like arms on a pair of scissors, severing Shiro’s corrupted arm from his body. 

His metal appendage clattering to the floor and powered down, Shiro stumbled his way to a stop. 

“Shiro…?”

The Black Paladin gritted his teeth together, overcome with a pain that he could not vocalize. His entire body went rigid, his suffering apparent as electric agony coursed through his being. Purple energy crackled through the severed stump of his arm, spewing and angry energy out of its core and bathing Shiro in its malice.

“Shiro!”

Sparks danced around Shiro’s entire body, the untamed power of his severed Galra arm now unrestrained by its metal casing. Shiro’s body was seized by the electricity coursing through every muscle in his body, filling his veins with lightning and downing out his every thought. 

When the power of Shiro’s Galra prosthetic was depleted and the brilliant arcs of crepitating purple energy finally evaporated into the air, Shiro collapsed. 

“No. No, no, no, no.” Keith rushed to Shiro’s side, rolling the man onto his back. 

He wasn’t breathing. 

“No, Shiro… please… _please_.” Keith’s fingers worked quickly to unclasp the front of Shiro’s Paladin armor, pulling off the plate metal so that he could expose the bodysuit beneath it. 

Keith pressed his palm against Shiro’s chest, searching for a heartbeat. 

He found none. 

“Not you, too. _Please…_ not you, too…” Keith placed his hands over Shiro’s heart, pressing down into Shiro’s chest. He didn’t know CPR, but he wasn’t going to let another person he loved slip through his fingers. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing…” Keith pushed down into Shiro’s chest, pausing a second after every few compressions to see if he could find a pulse. “... but I can’t lose you, too.”

Tears that he didn’t know had formed dripped down his face, wetting the front of Shiro’s bodysuit. Keith closed his eyes, holding back the sadness that was filling his heart at the thought of losing another person he loved. 

“I can’t… I said I’d never give up on you… but I can’t… I don’t know how…” Keith’s words caught in his throat as he dared not take a deep breath in fear that the dam he was building to hold back his emotions might collapse at such sudden pressure. 

But just as all hope seemed to have been lost, a warm presence covered Keith’s hands, guiding them closer towards the center of Shiro’s chest, before settling over his sternum.

“Here…?” Keith asked, posing his question out into the nothingness that accompanied him in his misery and fear. 

_Here_ , something responded.

Keith began his compressions again, this time, guided through his actions. _Quicker. Two inch compressions. Thirty of them_. Knowledge filled his mind that wasn’t his own, a remnant sliver of Vrek’s medic training. He wasn’t going to lose Shiro… Vrek wasn’t going to let that happen. 

He continued his compressions, pushing down against Shiro’s sternum and counting each time he attempted to push life back into Shiro’s still form. “... twenty-eight… twenty-nine… thirty.” 

_Good_ , the warming and familiar voice of his mate encouraged him. _Now, tilt his head back, hold his nose, give him two breaths._

Keith obeyed his alpha, sealing his lips over Shiro’s and pushing air into his lungs until he could see his chest rise under his ministrations. His lips were cold, and his body growing ever-colder with each passing second. This wasn’t working.

_Again, Keith. You can do this._

The calming candor of Vrek’s medic voice betrayed the severity of the situation, preventing Keith from panicking and giving him the composure required to try again. 

Thirty more compressions. Succinct. Until finally…

Shiro gasped for air, each breath he took easing the burden that weighed heavy on Keith’s heart. Shiro was alive, and for now, that was enough. 

“You’re okay, Shiro. I’m here.” He gathered Shiro in his arms, pulling the larger man into his lap and cradling his head in his lap. “I’ve got you, Shiro. I’ve got you.”

Keith ran his hands through Shiro’s hair, his eyes entirely focused on the steady rise and fall of his chest, ensuring that the man he loved… the only living man he loved… was still drawing breath. Shiro was alive, and he was here with him.

“I’m here,” Keith repeated. “I’ve got you.”

  
  
  


_“I’m here.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL THEN. Here we have my own interpretation of the Black Paladins fight. What did you think? This was particularly difficult, because my initial idea was to retread the Black Paladins fight from the series proper- but I quickly abandoned that idea because I thought that I could make the fight more visceral... more desperate... and more feral. Hopefully I succeeded!
> 
> This chapter was a doozy because it was a singular, uninterrupted 5000-word action set piece. Trying to pace out this fight and choreograph it in my head was a new kind of nightmare to deal with because it was so much larger than the small 'bursts' of action that would occur in "In the Back of Our Mind". But you'll have to be the judge as to whether or not this action was nauseating and too difficult to follow, or if it did effectively keep you on the edge of your seat (and I hope it was the latter!).
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! Did you enjoy the differences in the fight? Did Kuron's words sting a little? And what about 'Vrek's return'? What the hell is all that about anyways?!


	3. Those That Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lotor defeated, the Castle of Lions destroyed... the Paladins celebrate their victory while Keith continues to grieve his lost love.

The battle against Lotor had pressed the Paladins to their absolute limit. Between the exhausting battle with Sincline and having to implode the Castle ship that they had called home, one might assume that the endless war would have crushed all of the optimism out of the battle-weary heroes. But the Paladins found hope in the impossible, and they found merriment amongst themselves. The situation was dire, but each subsequent victory that they had somehow managed to pull from the clutches of defeat was a victory worth celebrating. 

After all, Shiro was returned to them.

In the dim light of the campfire on some planet in the furthest reaches of the known universe, the Paladins of Voltron sat and enjoyed a night of peace before beginning their long journey back to Earth.

“Seeing this fire actually reminds me of the pot-lucks that we would have.” Hunk shoveled a sporkful of food goo into his mouth, clearly yearning for the comforts of home. Mouth still stuffed, he continued, “Yeah- we’d start preparing the kalua pork at dawn in the fire pit out back. It’d cook all day so that by the time dinner rolled around, we’d have a meal for the whole family.” The Yellow Paladin tips his head back, reminiscing in the tastes and smells of his fondest memories. “Aunty Kalani would bring the lomi lomi salmon and uncle Isiah would bring the poke. Good times.” 

“Hunk, you’re forgetting about the most important food.” Pidge straightened her glasses, clearly about to law down the proverbial law and address her comrades own omission. “Three words: Birthday. Cake. Poptart.”

“To be quite honest,” Shiro spoke up, the smile still stretched across his face still a welcome return for the Paladins. “I could really use a drink. Nunvill is a poor substitute for some of what we have back home.”

“ _OoOooOoooOoh._ Does ‘ _Shiro the Hero_ ’ have some secret vices that we’re not aware of-?” Lance teased.

“Well, Lance...” Shiro aimed a callous stare at Lance, the intensity of his silver eyes bearing down and crushing the Blue Paladin. “After having died, then spending the last few months as a disembodied consciousness within the mindspace of the Black Lion, before having my mind transferred into the one-armed body of an evil-clone, I think that I’ve earned myself _a_ drink.”

There was a moment of tense quiet before Shiro barked out with laughter, and Pidge, Allura, and Hunk all joined him in laughing at Lance’s teasingly chastised expense. 

“I’d say at least _two_ drinks.” Pidge offered through her giggling. 

“Well,” Lance crosses his arms over his chest, jutting his lower lip out in flippant resentment of his own provocation, “I’ll tell you what I miss! I miss sitting on the beach, on a hot summer's day, sipping a can of Pepsi.”

“Oh. Absolutely.” Pidge remarks, “Caffeine. Sweet, glorious, caffeine.” 

“You’re absolutely right, Lance. I might have to revise my initial plans.” Shiro then pantomimed a thoughtful expression, bringing his remaining hand to his chin and scrunching up his brow in thought. “Yeah, alcohol can wait. Coffee comes first.”

At this point, the laughter was uproarious, with all but the Red Paladin joining in on the revelry. 

While present, Keith was someplace else… his attention far away from the campfire’s banter, his mind drifting off to a much lonelier place: a place devoid of this joy, a place devoid of friends, a place devoid of… _Vrek_.

Keith’s fingers wandered across the strings of fabric, tracing the colors that decorated the metallic cord that was fitted around his wrist. His attention kept wandering back to the strand of purple, distinguishing itself from the warm hues of the orange and red bands next to it. He remembered the words of his mate- the importance and intention of every banded strand, and the meaning it held.

 _“It’s me.”_ Vrek’s voice bled through their bond, crossing the fabric of time itself, and Keith was more than willing to close his eyes and savor the remnants of time he could still spend with his bond mate. 

_“It’s the color of the blood flowing through my veins. Tying my life to yours.”_ The memory of being given his bond bracelet on Karrahe was one that Keith would always treasure: the setting sun over the horizon, the emblazoned gemstones littering the flats before them, and Vrek… 

_“This is our bond. Strong, unbreakable, and unending.”_ Keith could swear that he could feel the soft presence of Vrek by his side in this very moment. Amongst the Paladins, the Alteans, and his mother- Keith would swear that he could feel Vrek by his side still, his arm draped around his shoulders, enveloping him in the blanket of love that Keith so missed. _“This is the two of us together.”_

He choked back his tears, not wanting to feel the warmth of his mate’s proximity disappear when he opened his eyes. He knew Vrek was gone, but he would indulge himself the fantasy of believing otherwise for just a few more seconds. 

“ _HellooOooOooOoo…_ ? _Earth to Keith?_ What’s the matter with this guy?” Lance jerked his thumb in Keith’s direction, and Keith was torn out of the imaginary grasp of his mate’s embrace and flung on to the pedestal of attention in front of his teammates. 

“What is it, Lance?” Keith kept his voice calm and measured, trying not to let the cracks in his heart split him apart in front of the other Paladins. 

“I _said_ , what’s with the friendship bracelet?” Lance gestured down to Keith’s wrist, and Keith immediately closed his fist around the bracelet to shield it from his friends’ wandering eyes. “It looks like something my niece would make at a sleepover and you keep looking at it like it’s about to hop off your wrist.”

The callousness of Lance’s words cut Keith deeper than he could have anticipated, and Keith strained himself to keep the pain at bay. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s probably a Galra thing.” Hunk offered. “It’s a Galra thing, right Keith? Some sort of Blade of Marmora code? Keeping track of how many Battlecruisers you’ve single-handedly taken down, or something?”

Keith clenched his jaw and bared his teeth at the Yellow Paladin. “Yes, Hunk. It’s a _Galra thing_.” 

Without another word, the Red Paladin stood, turning his back to his comrades and walking away from the sanctuary offered by the small fire before them.

Keith’s walk back to the Black Lion seemed like an impossible trek. Keith was hurting, and the mere thoughts of his mate started to shatter his composure, with his dwindling resolve fading along with every passing step. He needed to get back to the Black Lion. He couldn’t let his team see him like this. He couldn’t let the Paladins see him so… broken.

Keith bit down on his tongue, silencing the whimpers that he was sure to make as he could feel the tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

The Black Lion rested upon the surface of the planet, sprawled out on the cold ground much like its natural namesake. When Keith approached its maw, he found his trusted wolf curled up near the entrance to the vehicle, a sentry standing guard over what was to be their new home.

Keith had barely made it to the Black Lion by the time the tears started to escape from his eyes. Single drops of sadness streamed down his face and dripped down to the dirt like a piddling rainfall. 

The wolf reared its head up at Keith’s distress, letting out a soft whine towards his friend. 

“I’m okay, bud.” Keith dropped to a knee before he entered the Lion, giving the wolf a reassuring pat before continuing on into the solitude offered by the war machine. 

The door had barely closed behind him when Keith broke. He fell to the floor, once again letting himself be consumed by the grief that he felt. He cried, and in the confines of the Black Lion, he let the pain of his anguish slip from his throat as he screamed for his mate once more.

  
  
  


***

Once Keith had crossed the threshold of cold dirt and into the waiting maw of the Black Lion, the group’s conversation continued again in earnest- with a new focus. 

“So what’s his problem?” Lance pointed the question towards Shiro, whose gaze was still locked on the empty space that Keith had left across from him.

Shiro breathed a heavy sigh, “Krolia, you’re his mother, and it seems like you’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of time with him recently. Is there something we should know?”

Krolia found herself furthest away from the group, enjoying neither the company nor the light of the campfire. If the team had previously cast Keith into the role of the proverbial _lone wolf_ , it was now evident where that persona had manifested itself from.

Her eyes refused to meet the stares of the Paladins. “What I know isn’t mine to share. If Keith doesn’t feel comfortable revealing this information, then it is not my place to divulge it on his behalf.”

“Krolia,” Allura chimed in. “I understand your hesitation in speaking about such personal matters so openly, but as Keith’s teammates, we are entitled to know-”

“You are not _entitled_ to anything, Princess Allura.” Krolia snapped at the Altean Princess, meeting her inquisitive eyes with a scathing glare. She did not shout, and she would not need to- Krolia knew that the warning behind her words were adequately conveyed by the Princess’ open-mouthed expression.

Shiro placed his hand up, signaling a truce between parties. “What Allura means to say- is that we all care about Keith. As his friends, we should know if there is something that’s troubling him.”

Keith’s mother holds eye contact with Allura until the Princess falters and averts her gaze.

“Krolia,” Shiro begged for her attention, the hurt in his eyes melting her scowl. “Please.” 

She stared into the steely look of the Black Paladin, her golden eyes searching for any hints of deception that would taint his worried plea. Eventually, she relented.

“My son,” She began, struggling to find the tact in the words that would quell their curiosity. “Keith. He- he found a mate, and he bonded himself to him.”

The answer was not what anyone was expecting, with Shiro looking the most unprepared to have received the answer that was given. 

“So,” Lance seemed to be searching the furthest reaches of his brain to assemble the puzzle pieces before him. “Keith’s friendship bracelet is like, what-? A gift from his boyfriend-?”

“Well… I mean… it makes sense.” Hunk stirred his spork in the meager remnants of his meal. “You said that the time dilation made time pass slower for you guys? So it’s been… what? Two years? I’m sure Keith misses his boyfriend.”

“Matt and my father were gone for a year, and I was more than ready to steal a ship from the Garrison and fly up after them.” Pidge offered. “We do whatever we can to get back to the ones we care about.”

The light in Shiro’s eyes faded for a brief second, as if the joys of being returned to life was somehow lessened at the mere thought that the life he could have pursued was already lost to him.

“No,” Krolia shook her head, shooting down all speculation. “I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that.”

The group leaned in closer, anxiously anticipating for some form of elaboration. 

“A bond mate. Being bonded. It’s… substantially more than you could imagine. A bonding isn’t just a union between two individuals, it is a union between two _souls_.” 

“Alright, let me get this straight.” Pidge held up her hands in the shape of the letter ‘T’. “Are you saying Keith got _married?_ ”

“To equate a bonding to a marriage is a remarkable trivialization of Galran heritage.” Krolia nearly scoffed at the idea. “It’s so much _more_ than that. A bonding quite literally binds two souls together. They share their thoughts, their emotions, their joys-”

Krolia sucked in a breath, her eyes losing themselves in the fire before them as her train of thought led her down an unfortunate path of memories. “-and they share each other's pains. Two people become a single entity.”

“ _Awwwww_ , I never took Mullet for the romantic type. Keith is _pining-_ ” Lance rested his chin in his hand, already preparing the new ammunition he would use against their returned leader.

“No. Keith is _mourning_.” Krolia let out a heavy sigh, “Something happened while we were in the Quantum Abyss, and Keith’s bond mate… died.”

The sullen silence that punctuated her words was only broken by the fear in Shiro’s voice. “But, you said that ‘ _they share in each other’s pains_ ’. Does that mean-?”

“Yes, I was speaking literally.” Krolia rubbed a clawed hand over her face, attempting to wipe away the tears that were forming before the Paladins could notice. “It appears as if his mate was tortured. And Keith felt every bit of it. The pain only stopped when his mate died.”

“So... is Keith better now, right? He’s not being tortured anymore?” Hunk furrowed his brow and aimed a truly concerned stare at Krolia.

“You all fail to understand. Bond mates occupy each other’s existence. One’s life mirrors the other’s. When your bond mate dies, a part of you dies with them. And I -” Krolia bit her lip to keep it from trembling. “I don’t know how much of _‘Keith’_ Vrek took with him when he died. I doubt even Keith knows how much of himself he has left.”

None of the Paladins could find the words to fill the void that Krolia’s words had left, the importance of any conversation that could have materialized amongst themselves now seemed insignificant when compared to the silent suffering that Keith was enduring. In the end, no words seemed adequate enough, and the Paladins of Voltron instead resigned themselves to silence. 

“I think I’m going to call it for the night.” Pidge rose from her seat by the fire. 

“Yeah- it’s getting pretty late. Big day tomorrow. Lots of travel.” Hunk said. The two Paladins excused themselves, and retreated back to their respective Lions. 

Slowly but surely, the rest of their little group all filtered back to their lions, with Coran and Romelle returning with Allura to the Blue Lion- the universe’s last bastion of Alteans finding comfort within each other. 

In time, it was just Shiro and Krolia sitting across from each other.

“Are you going to stay out here? It’s rather cold.” Shiro stood, and turned his way back to the Black Lion.

“The cold doesn’t bother me.” Krolia settled herself on the dirt, resting her head against the log that the Paladins had been using as a bench. “You’re going to go to him?”

“I am.”

Krolia mulled over his response. “Shiro, Keith wants space. He wants to be left alone.”

“With all due respect, you may know what Keith wants, but I have different opinions on what I think it is that Keith _needs_ right now.” Shiro nodded towards Krolia, and took his leave. 

For as much time that Krolia had spent with her son in the Quantum Abyss, she hadn’t really gotten to know him as well as she might have hoped. Keith was an anomaly- much like herself, he buried his emotions deep within himself in the hopes that the world would be oblivious to his pains. But whereas Krolia had truly numbed herself to the joys and sadness that plagued the universe- Keith felt every slight and every betrayal… and it wounded him deeper than most.

Shiro would see that Keith was not the facade of stoicism that he tried so very hard to preserve. Keith’s emotions were like an exposed nerve: constantly abused by every word and every callous glance aimed his way. Shiro was one of the few people to ever truly understand Keith, and right now- he understood how badly Keith needed him. 

The wolf was still curled up outside of the entrance to the Black Lion, and the rounded mass of fur shifted and stood when Shiro approached. The fur between its shoulder blades stood on end, and its lips curled up as it bared its glistening white fangs at the Paladin. 

Shiro raised his remaining arm, but any attempts to circumvent the wolf and edge his way closer to the Black Lion were met with the rumblings of a low growl. He tried to circle around the wolf, with the hopes of leading the animal away from the entrance of the Black Lion- but the wolf did not abandon his post. He was _guarding_ Keith. The message was clear.

 _Keith must be kept safe._

Unable to outsmart the wolf and _certain_ that he would be unable to _fight_ the wolf, Shiro resorted to what he thought would be a futile effort: reason. 

“I know that you’re just trying to protect Keith, but I don’t mean him any harm.” 

The wolf huffed at Shiro, lowering its head and deepening its growl. What Shiro would mistake for a lack of understanding was, in actuality- an astute comprehension: the wolf knew the pain that Keith had experienced, and unintentional as it may be- it knew that those who don’t mean us harm are usually the ones whose actions cut deepest. The scar that Keith now bore was proof enough of that.

“Keith’s in pain right now.” Shiro brought himself down to a crouch, bringing himself down to the wolf’s level. “He’s suffering. Alone. And I don’t want him to be alone.”

The wolf contemplated the human’s words. Reluctantly, the wolf sat back on its haunches, and allowed Shiro to pass.

“Thank you.” Shiro reached out to pet the cosmic creature, but stilled his hand when the wolf’s lips curled themselves back in warning. “Okay, not there yet. That’s alright.”

Shiro stepped into the open maw of the Black Lion, idly tracing his hand against the hull. It felt like years since he had been allowed to freely cross the boundaries of the Lion’s physical form. He had spent so much time trapped within the mindscape of the Black Lion that he had almost forgotten the intricacies of the machine itself: the way that the hues of blue hummed between the very panels of its interior- barely containing the energy that powered it. Now, the power was dim, a mere flicker in the dark. The fight with Lotor had taken its toll on the Lions.

Doors opened for him automatically, the Lion knowing the reason for Shiro’s return and guiding him towards its new Paladin. 

He found Keith in the back of the cargo bay, sitting on the makeshift cot with his knees pressed against his chest. His breath would hitch every few seconds, the sharp inhales of his unshackled misery sounding like a drowning man’s desperate gasps for air. He was lost in that misery, not even hearing the door slide open.

“Keith?”

“Shiro…?” The words were strained and unsteady, and when Keith lifted his head to look at Shiro, it was clear that the boy’s eyes were raw from tears. 

Keith rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand, smearing the wetness across his face.

Shiro crossed the distance between them, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Keith. Reluctantly, Keith pulled himself away from the wall, kicking his legs over the side of the cot and sitting shoulder to shoulder with Shiro.

“Keith, I’m so sorry about what happened.”

Keith studied the metal grates lining the floor of the Black Lion. “Krolia told you?”

“She did.”

“It wasn’t her place to say.” Keith’s indignation was clear, it was a trust that he had placed in her. A trust that she had betrayed.

“I’m glad that she did.” Shiro placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Keith, the whole team is here for you. We’re in this together.”

“Are we?” He shrugged Shiro’s grasp off of his shoulder. “Everyone that gets close to me is just another opportunity to be disappointed.”

Fresh tears started to fill the corners of Keith’s eyes. 

“They’ll leave… or...or... or,” Each word was punctuated with the staccato-like enunciation of someone who was reaching for air through aborted breaths. He could barely bring himself to finish the thought, “or… they’ll be taken away.”

He shut his eyes tight, hoping that maybe he could hold the tears at bay. 

He couldn’t. 

He shattered like glass. 

Keith couldn’t breathe, his grief was consuming his soul.. His cries were not silent, and his suffering was not without voice; Keith’s sobs were accompanied by a painful, guttural groan that pierced Shiro’s heart. 

“Shhhhh… Shhhhhh…” Shiro pulled Keith close to him, letting Keith rest his head against the front of his armor.

Keith was hyperventilating, the labored strain of his every breath catching in his chest and causing his shoulders to spasm with the effort. This form of panic was one that Shiro was all too familiar with- his late nights and early mornings in the Castle of Lions always being interrupted by the nightmares of his time in Galra captivity. 

“Follow my hand.” He needed to steady Keith’s breathing. He needed his focus. Shiro drew three solid lines across Keith’s back: two vertical, and one horizontal. His touch was serene, gently pressing into Keith’s black undersuit with the tips of his fingers, a life raft thrown to him amidst a raging ocean.

“Did you get that-?”

Keith shook his head, still unable to find the confidence to form words. But his breathing was slowing down, and so, Keith closed his eyes, and focused once more on the pattern that Shiro was drawing. 

  
Three lines: two Vertical, one horizontal.

_H_

Keith focused, pulling in each breath with every gentle touch of the lines that Shiro was tracing. This time, four lines: one vertical, three horizontal. 

_E_

The tears had stopped, and Keith was now sucking in each breath slowly through his nose, before allowing himself to shakily exhale through his mouth. His heart was still hammering in his chest, but at least he could breathe. Two lines and a curve: A vertical line, a diagonal line, and a half circle.

_R_

Keith pressed his cheek against the cold metal of Shiro’s breastplate, wishing with all of his heart that he could be warmed beneath Shiro’s touch. Four more lines, a repeat in the pattern: one vertical, three horizontal.

_E_

Shiro’s hand drifted down, resting his palm on the lower part of Keith’s back. “What did I write?”

Keith sat back up, pulling his head away from Shiro’s chest so that he could look the man in the eyes. His voice was shaky, but at least he could bring himself to form the answer to Shiro’s question, “Here.”

“That’s right. You’re _here_ , and I’m _here_.” A small smile pulled at the corners of Shiro’s lips, “I’m here for you, Keith. I’m here.”

Keith nodded in acknowledgement, now acutely aware of the timing that would require his breathing to normalize. His heart rate was slowing, steadying itself as he counted his breaths. _In for five seconds. Hold for three seconds. Release for five seconds_. He repeated this pattern until he felt human again.

“How do you feel, Keith?”

“I feel…” There were words that Keith wanted to form, automated responses that he was conditioned to provide despite those answers holding no water. 

_… I feel fine._

_… I feel better._

None of it was accurate, and before he could stop himself, the truth came bubbling out of him. 

“I feel _broken_.” He stared into Shiro’s eyes, falling into the deep pools of pewter that were just as entrancing now as they had been when Keith had first fallen in love with him.

He was close, close enough to let Keith feel the heat of each weary breath he was taking. The two were drifting towards each other, as surely as they had always been drifting towards each other, until suddenly, their lips pressed together.

Keith melted into the kiss. Shiro’s lips were hot, and the warmth quickly spread from Keith’s lips through his chest until suddenly, it was as if he would never feel cold again. Everything had felt so dead, and so hollow- and Shiro’s mere presence wiped all of that away until Keith no longer felt alone. It was everything that Keith had wanted, and it was as perfect as he had dreamed it would be.

Keith was unlike anyone that Shiro had ever kissed before. All the fire and all the rage that Keith had bottled up inside of himself was like a smoldering ember that Shiro was chasing. His tongue would probe Keith’s mouth, cautiously trying to coax Keith’s skittish tongue out of its hollow so that he could taste more of the divinity that Keith had to offer. Shiro bit down on Keith’s lower lip, sucking and pulling on it until he could taste the salty tear-stained liquid that had soaked into his skin. 

They had both wanted this for so long. They had both loved each other for so long.

And for a single, solitary moment: their world was perfect. 

Until they had realized the circumstances of their coupling.

Shiro pulled away from Keith, and averted his eyes in shame. Keith pulled away in equal measure, his right hand returning to its place over his chest: shielding his heart from the emptiness that was consuming him.

Keith felt grief, he felt shame.

He felt alone. 

“I… should go.” Shiro dared not look Keith in the eyes. He couldn’t. His intention had been to give Keith a shoulder to cry on, and Shiro had ended up taking advantage of a grieving widow. 

But when Shiro went to stand, he found his hand caught in Keith’s tight embrace. “No, wait-”

Shiro’s gaze first focused on the grip around his fingers, and then to the bracelet fitted around Keith’s wrist, before he was finally able to find the courage to look at the pain on Keith’s face.

The look on Keith’s face shot Shiro through the heart. It was agony, it was fear, it was loneliness.

“Shiro, I…” Keith’s eyes darted around the cargo hold of the Black Lion, searching for words far away and forever out of reach, before finally refocusing on his friend. “I’ve been alone for _so long_. I haven’t been touched in _so_ _long_. Please… don’t go. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Shiro all but fell back into Keith’s arms, their mouths crashing together like waves against the shoreline. He held Keith’s face in his hand, and Keith all but purred against his touch. He struggled with the zipper on the back of Keith’s bodysuit, while Keith’s adept hands were all too quick to peel off his armor. 

Keith didn’t have to be alone anymore.

  
  


***

  
  
  


Keith woke slowly, rising from his slumber as if he were clawing his way out of a pit of quicksand. The warm presence in the bed next to him pulling him back to a safer time -a happier time- where he could allow himself to enjoy each step of his morning routine without having to worry about the dangers that lurked beyond the edge of their camp fire.

 _Breathe._ Keith inhaled, taking in vast lungfuls of recycled oxygen: the artificial taste of the metal-flavored air causing Keith to wince and expel every last bit of the offensive taste. After years in space, he would still never acclimate himself to the machine-churned air that would fill his lungs.

 _Feel_. He stretched out his legs, pointing his toes outward and letting the muscles in his thighs burn against the pain of their inactivity. Keith clenched his fists a few times, feeling the strength return to his fingers as he squeezed his digits around the rough blanket covering him.

 _Vrek_. Keith curled into the warm presence beside him, burying himself against the ribcage he was nestled against. He expected to feel the softness of Vrek’s plush fur brushing up against his face. But when Keith’s face grazed very warm, very _human_ skin, he froze. 

_Shiro, not Vrek._ He reminded himself _. Vrek is gone._

A plethora of emotions came flooding back into Keith’s senses. Hurt. Pain. Loss. Grief. Loneliness. Comfort. Affection. Touch. And then… _love_. 

Keith pulled his wrist up in front of his face, and while it took a few moments before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, he knew what he was looking for was still there. His bond bracelet- it was the only thing that he was wearing right now. Keith let his eyes wander down across the strands of fabric, the colors were indistinguishable in this low light- but he was still able to identify the solid, shining cord from the rest of bands fitted around his wrist.

 _“This is the two of us together.”_

His mate’s words echoed through his mind like ripples upon the still water of a pond, and Keith familiarized himself with a new feeling that was growing in his chest like a tumor.

_Betrayal._

Keith buried his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He didn’t know who he was hiding from in this darkness, but he just wanted to hide. He was a disaster: a mix of emotions blended together into a cocktail of woe that Keith was forced to drink from. 

_No._ He had had enough of this misery, and he was not going to let it control him. Vrek was gone, and Keith was left to pick up what remained of his tattered life so that he could move forward with whatever constituted his meaningless existence. He wrapped his arm tight around Shiro’s chest, determined to savor what happiness he could scavenge. 

He needed to focus on what he had, and not what he had lost.

Keith smothered his face against Shiro’s sleeping form, closing his eyes tight and basking in Shiro’s scent. It was rich, and it was so remarkably different from the _home_ and _safety_ that he had picked up in Vrek’s scent. He desperately tried to fill the hole left in him by Vrek’s absence with Shiro’s presence, but he needed to stop comparing the two of them- Shiro was not Vrek, and Shiro could never _replace_ Vrek in Keith’s mind. But Shiro was _here_ , and Vrek wasn’t, and Keith couldn’t tie himself to the memory of a lover passed if he had any hopes of looking forward to tomorrow again.

He started to drift back to sleep, only vaguely aware of the calm reassurance pressed into the back of his mind by Shiro’s subconscious. The two Paladins were connected, the Black Lion harboring and fostering the connection they shared together within the mindscape contained within it’s quintessence-infused hull. In its fledgling state, their bond was weak -a mere glass of water placed in the once oceanic dunes of the Sahara when compared to Keith’s bond with Vrek- but fostered and cultivated, it was a bond that might one day fill the void that had crippled Keith.

  
  
  


He would be whole again.

  
  
  


One day.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Shiro woke with a start, shuddering against the warmth of the body pressed against him. The presence was unfamiliar, and it caused the synapses in his brain to fire with fear before he was able to recognize the slender curve of Keith’s lithe body pressed into his side. 

“Mmmmmm… Shiro…?” Keith’s voice was still groggy; the boy was forced from his slumber by Shiro’s own fears bleeding through the bond they shared with the Black Lion, as much as it was from Shiro’s sudden movement. 

“It’s nothing, just… go back to sleep.” Shiro closed his eyes, his hand falling to rest between Keith’s naked shoulder blades, tracing his fingers up the length of Keith’s spine. Keith hummed against his side. 

Shiro was aware of the situation that he was in, and it hurt. Hiding his own feelings from Keith had been difficult- hiding them from himself? Even moreso. He did love Keith, a fact that had become increasingly harder to conceal when Keith had risked life and limb to drag him out of the jaws of death again and again.

But the circumstances of this relationship now seemed tainted: with Shiro having essentially _taken advantage_ of Keith’s grief and loneliness to satisfy his own romantic interests. He didn’t want the desires of his heart to culminate in a one-night-stand, and he didn’t want this night of passion to be cast to the sands of time and forgotten as a mistake: a desperate and grieving widower who gave in to the throes of passion and let themselves be burned by the regret that would surely follow. 

Shiro sighed, a pained expression that sapped the resolve from his heart. He continued to stroke Keith’s back, letting himself lose himself in the fantasy of love that had kept him alive in the mindscape of the Black Lion. Tilting his head down, Shiro wanted to take in one more look of Keith’s vulnerable self pressed up against his side, but instead, Shiro found himself staring into the violet hues of Keith’s eyes. 

Keith was searching Shiro’s face, studying his features to discern the question that it seemed Shiro couldn’t bring himself to say. “Something is bothering you.”

“Keith, I…” Shiro's eyes instinctively wandered towards the circle of scars nestled against the side of Keith’s neck- the markings of a Galra who had loved Keith. Then, his eyes wandered up to the fresher scar that bisected Keith’s cheek- the mark that _he_ had left on him, a remnant reminder of the time that Shiro had nearly _killed_ him. “... this was a mistake.”

The Red Paladin sat up, pulling the blankets up around himself as if suddenly ashamed by his nudity. “Shiro. I didn’t want a pity-fuck. If that’s all this is then… fine. You can…” Keith bit down on his tongue to stop his voice from cracking, and he closed his eyes so that Shiro wouldn’t be able to see the tears that were welling up behind them. “You can _leave_.”

“No, Keith- that’s not what I-” Shiro pulled his hand up to Keith’s face, pressing the palm of his hand up against the dark scar on Keith’s cheek and threading his fingers through the side of Keith’s hair.

It was a mistake. 

In the span of a single, merciless second, Keith was pulled back to a battle of life or death- the comforting touch of his friend coming moments before that friend had attempted to end his life. Keith recoiled, and he pushed Shiro’s hand away from his face before he had even realized that he found himself struggling to breathe. 

“Keith!” Shiro backed up, not oblivious to the conflict that his mere presence was stirring within the man he loved. “I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

A hand was held up to silence his apologies. Keith focused on his breathing, slowly regaining control of his body before he could address Shiro once more. _Breathe_ , he told himself. _In for five seconds. Hold for three seconds. Release for five seconds._ In time, the pattern worked, and Keith found his voice once more. 

“No- I… I’m sorry. I know that wasn’t you. I know that you wouldn’t ever _intend_ to hurt me.” 

The emphasis placed on the intention seemed like a veiled insult towards Shiro, as if his actions would hurt Keith whether he had intended to or not. “Keith, you’re not thinking straight. You’re grieving. And it was irresponsible of me to take advantage of you like-”

“I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions.” Keith’s eyes were ablaze with irritation, the same irritation that Shiro had seen all those years ago in the Garrison. People had always doubted Keith- his abilities to make decisions, his actions, it was as if no one _trusted_ him. “Shiro, I love you. I always have. I didn’t want to fuck you just because I’m sad and you’re here. I just… I thought that you might love me back.”

The irritation instantly melted away into remorse. He didn’t want to be mad anymore, he didn’t have the strength for anger. 

“Keith…” Shiro’s heart carried him faster than his brain could stop him, and before Keith had been given another chance to recoil, Shiro had wrapped his arm tight around him, and had pulled him in for a tight embrace. “Keith, I do feel the same way. I do love you. I just don’t want you to have any regrets.”

“I have regrets, Shiro. More than I can count.” Keith sighed, pressing the unscarred cheek against Shiro’s chiseled jawline. “But this…” He pulled away, staring back into Shiro’s wanton gaze with the windows to his own tormented soul.

“This isn’t one of them.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“Correct bearings by zero-point-three-two-seven, confirm?” Light reflected off of Pidge’s glasses, the numbers across her screen scrolling past her eyes at an almost unreadable speed.

Sat in the cockpit of the Green Lion, alone with the numbers, Pidge let herself idly run through the math in her head as she calculated the Paladin’s trajectory as they drifted through space.

“Confirmed.” Keith replied.

“Confirmed.” From Hunk.

“Confirmed.” From Allura.

“ _Uuuuuuugh_.” From Lance. “Someone tell me again why it is we can’t just-” A noise cracked over the radio, with Lance having imitated some sort of _‘fwooshing’_ sound, “-back to Earth?”

Pidge let out a sigh, pulling her glasses off of her face and rubbing the bridge of her nose. She pinched the space between her eyes, both in irritation- as well as to massage the indentations that the glasses had left there. “Lance, we’ve been over this.”

“The Lions don’t have enough power for a full burn.” Allura’s soft voice always seemed kind when she was addressing Lance. “We would deplete the power cores and never make it to Earth.”

“But we do this _every_ three hours. I can’t even get a decent night's rest.” Lance’s voice cracked when he exclaimed, “Come on! I need my beauty sleep! It’s not easy looking this good!”

“We need to keep scheduled intervals to keep our course-correction to a minimum.” Pidge wiped the lenses off with her glove before returning them to her face. “Hitting Earth from here is like… firing a BB gun from across a football field with the intention of hitting a single blade of grass. Mathematically it’s _possible_ , but...”

“Complicated, I get it. I get it.” Lance huffed, defeated. “Point three-two-seven. Confirmed.”

“Alright, team,” Keith took over while Pidge punched in her adjustments before settling her hands back on the joysticks of her Lion’s controls. “Firing in: three… two… one… fire.”

The Lions all simultaneously kicked slightly to the left, their course corrected. 

“Next adjustment in three hours.” Pidge started crunching numbers again, examining the star charts they had of the next few solar systems to see what forms of cosmic interference they might run into. 

“Alright, everyone.” Keith’s voice sounded strained, as if the burdens of having to address the team was a responsibility he didn’t feel fit to shoulder. He was still getting used to his role in the Black Lion once more… and some growing pains were to be expected. “Try to get some rest. We’ll reconvene in three hours.”

There were a few subsequent clicks from everyone logging off, until Pidge was once again left in silence with her numbers. The trip was going to be hard, and it was going to be long, and the responsibility had fallen to Pidge to chart the most optimal course to see that they all made it home. She didn’t mind. Numbers were much easier to figure out than people, and spending long, sleepless nights alone with impossible equations is what she had grown accustomed to, long before Shiro’s shuttle had crashed in the Arizona desert behind the Garrison. 

The math was a challenge, but it wasn’t a challenge she was unfamiliar with: each variable that presented itself -every random bit of space debris that would have to be avoided, or every unaccounted gravity well- would alter their path just enough to send them careening past their beautiful blue homeworld. The numbers seemed imposing, but Pidge was motivated; every variable was a mere obstacle keeping her from her mom and dad- and when presented with the fantasy of returning home, no obstacle would stand in her way. 

With her face buried in her monitor, Pidge fell back into the comfortable routine of analyzing, theorizing, and running simulation. Amongst the surety offered by the equations, Pidge felt like a titan… this was her battleground.

A blip on her long range scanner. It pulled her attention away for just a moment. 

_Probably just more space trash._ She flicked the notification away and turned her attention back towards the data at hand. They needed to get home, everything else could wait. 

Another blip. Closer. Heading straight for them. 

_Alright, not space trash._ Pidge brushed aside her plans for their journey home, and opened up a hailing frequency to the rest of the Paladins. They would have to prepare themselves for a fight. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Allies were found in the most unlikely of places. 

The team had been captured by two of Lotor’s former Generals, and they had found themselves rescued at the hands of the third. Lacking a majority of their power, the Voltron Lions were easy pickings for a single Galra Battlecruiser and a handful of Dart Fighters. 

But, the Paladins had escaped, and now, Keith found himself beside the same Galra that he had rescued within the belly of the Weblum so long ago. 

His blue energy shield held out in front of him, Keith and this General were standing their ground. On the opposite end of the corridor, the other two Generals -ones once introduced by Lotor as Zethrid and Ezor- fired Galran Pulse rifles at them. The purple energy was absorbed by Keith’s shield and the impact of each blast was barely felt in his arm, but still, they couldn’t keep up this stalemate forever. 

The Galra at his side rested a hand on Keith’s shoulder (a familiar and welcome presence) and Keith instantly stepped a foot back to steady himself into the ready position that he and Vrek had developed. His calf brushed against the shin of his newfound ally, and Keith’s mind searched desperately for the safety of the connection that he would find when he adopted this same stance with Vrek.

His mind wandered, feeling the warmth and weight of the Galra behind him and questioning for the briefest of moments why Vrek’s thoughts weren’t filling his own. There was a tap on his shoulder, and when Keith turned his head- he was again reminded of his mate’s absence. The woman next to him held her pistol up, a plan that Keith recognized. Keith nodded back, and together, they began to press the advance. 

Every few seconds, Keith would lower his shield, and the Galra next to him took aim down the hallway and returned fire to her former comrades. When Zethrid and Ezor would duck for cover, Keith and his newfound companion would take a few steps forward. They needed to get to the Black Lion, and the only way to do that was _through_ Zethrid and Ezor. 

Each pot shot taken by his newfound ally was another blast that was fired dangerously close to his head, a superheated reminder that- if things went awry, Keith would find himself fighting a battle on two fronts. 

_No. Trust someone,_ he chided himself. Keith recalled his first interaction with this General, when she had taken aim at him and he had replied with the accusatory remark of _“so you’re just like the rest of them”_ ; but Keith has come a long way since then. Not all Galra were like Zarkon and Lotor. 

But by that same logic... not all Galra were like Vrek or Regris...

While their relationship as comrades seemed tenuous at best, she _did_ risk herself to free the Paladins, and that alone was reason enough for Keith to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her in combat against a common foe. 

Footsteps echoed down the hallway towards them, and soon enough, the two unlikely allies were facing down the barrels of dozens of Galran rifles. What had been a manageable volley of enemy fire then morphed into a hailfire of violent, purple plasma. Zethrid and Ezor had been reinforced, and this situation was looking increasingly dire. 

The increased barrage was causing Keith’s shield to buckle, and the Paladin dropped to a knee to reduce his profile to help avoid the incoming fire. Over the intensity of the offense, the pair would hear Zethrid shout at them, “You’re outnumbered and outgunned! Surrender now, and we’ll only torture ya a little bit!”

Keith grit his teeth, turning his head to mutter back to his ally, “They’re blocking our exit route. We need to find a way past them.”

The Galra general held up the inside of her wrist to her face, an apparent countdown timer nearly having reached completion, “No. We just need to stall them for a few more ticks.” 

“Stall them? Stall them for what?”

The lights in the corridor shut off one by one, the entirety of the Galra cruiser losing power as the ship was submerged in darkness. 

“Backup.”

Keith quickly deactivated his energy shield, grabbing his ally by the shoulders and pulling them both into one of the alcoves of safety offered by the cruiser's inefficient design. Brilliant arcs of purple whizzed past the position they had just occupied, providing some amount of illumination within the dark corridor.

“Cease fire, you idiot!” Shouting could be heard down the length of the hallway. “Someone tell me what happened!”

A crackling of a radio. “Ma’am, the ship has lost power. Weapons and engines are down. We’re dead in the water.”

A bone-chilling growl was let loose from Zethrid, as she pointed her anger in the same direction as her rifle, “Acxa, what did you do to my ship?!”

Acxa.

“It isn’t yours. Surrender now, and I’ll put in a good word for you.” Acxa shouted back at her former colleagues.

“Surrender? To you and what army?” Laughter echoed across the bulkheads, with Zethrid letting out a hearty chuckle of which her subordinates were obligated to join in on. “Tell ya what. I’ll give you until the count of five before I start rolling grenades down the hall.” 

“ _Uuuuuh_ , Keith…?” Pidge’s voice squeaked through his helmet.

“Kinda busy, Pidge. Can this wait?” Keith’s bayard appeared in the palm of his hand, transforming itself into a broadsword in the event Zethrid and Ezor’s troops were taking the opportunity to advance upon them.

_“Five…”_

“It _really_ can’t. Three other Galra cruisers just dropped out of hyperspace. You need to get out of there, NOW.” 

Keith shot a pointed glare at Acxa, “This the backup you were waiting for?”

“It is indeed.”  
  


_“... Four…”_

Keith looked Acxa up and down, narrowing his eyes at the Galra as if studying her intention. Yes, they found themselves as allies… but then again, those firing at them were also once her allies. As quickly as enemies could become friends, friends could also become enemies; it was a lesson that the Paladins had learned all too late. 

“I understand your trepidations.” Acxa sighed, finding the courage within herself to level her gaze at Keith, “But we have no quarrel with Voltron. You may, in fact, wish to hear what we have to say.”

Acxa made a move for her sidearm, and Keith’s entire body tensed. Before he could stop himself, his reactions had carried his limbs- pointing the edge of his blade at Acxa's throat while he bared his teeth at the woman in true Galra fashion.

_“... Three…”_

Acxa raised one hand up in submission, the other offering Keith her sidearm. “You can trust me.”

The second that passed between the two Galra half-breeds was wrought with tension, the air between them electric. Keith lowered his blade, and urged Acxa to keep her sidearm. “Pidge, do not engage those Galra cruisers. Standby.”

_“... Two…”_

“MA’AM!” Static trickled over Zethrid’s radio once more, and Ezor groaned at the distraction that was delaying the carnage that she was expecting. 

“ _WHAT?!_ ” Zethrid growled into her forearm, “How many times have I told you not to interrupt me when I’m about to kill something!”

“We have three Acclimator-Class Cruisers advancing on our rear. They’re targeting our engines!” The voice coming through the radio was panicked.

“Well, power up shields and prepare to return fire!” Zethrid ordered. 

“We’re still rebooting our systems. Shields are down, engines are offline, and our weapons are unresponsive. We’re defenseless, we can’t run, and we can’t fight back. What do we do?” They had been backed into a corner. Zethrid turned to Ezor, and the two looked at each other knowing that they only had one alternative.

Begrudgingly, Zethrid turned to her crew and said, “Get to the pods. We escape and live to fight another day.”

The thunderous echoes of footsteps began to fade away, but before Keith and Acxa would allow themselves to breathe easy, Zethrid’s booming, malice-filled voice shouted at them from down the hall. “Oh, but you two can still keep this.”

Something small and metallic clanked its way down the hall, bouncing off the corridor floor a few times before rolling to a stop a fair distance from the pair.

“MOVE!” Acxa shouted.

The pair broke into a sprint, racing towards the end of the corridor. 

“Pidge!” Keith barked over their intercom, “Lock on to my location and fire on the nearest airlock!”

“The nearest wha-?”

“NOW, PIDGE!”

The explosion behind them propelled them off of their feet, the fire of the explosion already licking at their heels as their momentum carried them the rest of the way down the corridor. Not more than a second later, the wall in front of them was melted by the familiar fire of the Green Lion’s main cannon. Keith wrapped his arms around Acxa's waist, and fired his jetpack to send them both out into the safety of space. Once they found themselves engulfed in the blackness of space, the fire that had been chasing them suffocated and died in the lifeless vacuum. 

The two drifted in space, still holding on to one another. 

“My name is Acxa.”

“Keith.” He let out a breath, releasing his vice grip around her waist and allowing her to drift out to an arms length away from him. “Thanks for saving our skins.”

“Consider it a debt paid.” She nodded at him, turning her gaze over his shoulder to look at the five Voltron Lions behind him.

Meanwhile, Keith aimed his attention over Acxa's shoulder, setting his sights on the three fully operational Galra Battlecruisers that were now upon them. “Now, what is it you think we would want to hear?”

  
  
  


***

  
  


There were no shackles, and the Paladins were allowed to keep their weapons, however being escorted by armed sentries down the all-too-familiar halls of yet another Galra Cruiser- it was hard for the Paladins not to think that they had traded one prison for another. 

Acxa led the group into what appeared to be a conference room: a single, elongated table filling most of the room’s space. 

The atmosphere was apprehensive, with the Paladins still not having dropped their guard since their liberation from Zethrid and Ezor’s Battlecruiser. The room was filled with an eerie silence, with every member present waiting on bated breath to see what would come of this apparent armistice. 

The calm was broken by Lance, who was incessantly tapping his finger against his bicep- his arms obstinately crossed over his chest as he studied their former enemy. Eyes started to gravitate towards the Blue Paladin, with the persistence of the _‘taptaptapping’_ of his fingers doing an inadequate job of filling the void of the room. 

Acxa cleared her throat, “The Commanding Officer should be here shortly.”

Ignoring her statement entirely, Lance spoke, “Something about this one rubs me the wrong way. Anyone else get that feeling?” His incriminating gaze did not leave Acxa, and his words were spoken none-too-quietly. He had intended for her to hear the sting of every syllable. 

“Perhaps,” Pidge crossed her arms as well, falling in rank next to Lance, “Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that she’s tried to _kill us_ time and time again.”

“No harm will come to you. You are not prisoners here.” The Galran General crossed her right arm over her chest, giving the group the typical salute that soldiers of the Empire threw around. “I give you my word that-”

“Forgive me for not taking your word.” Pidge narrowed her eyes at Acxa, seething sarcasm. “Did you also give Lotor your word? Or Zarkon? How many sides have you been playing here?”

Hunk chimed in. “Pidge does have a point. We have seen you working with Lotor… And Haggar… And Zarkon… And like- most of those people have tried to kill each other at one point or another.”

“GUYS. That’s enough!” Keith’s voice boomed over the rest of the Paladins, a faint inhuman growl starting to bleed into his words. 

A calm and sympathetic Shiro placed his hand atop Keith’s shoulder, and after a brief glance up at the beautifully serene eyes of the Black Paladin, Keith’s agitated demeanor melted. It was as if Shiro was reminding Keith of the burdens of leadership, and how Keith would need to exhibit more self control if he was to rally the team behind him, and there- in the dark recesses of his mind, Keith could almost hear Shiro’s own thoughts echoing through to his own. 

_Patience yields focus._

Keith took a deep breath before he continued, “We’re here now. Acxa offered us information, and right now- we have no idea what’s happening to the rest of the universe.”

With a resigned “ _Hmph_ ”, Lance sat down.

“I understand the doubts you must have,” Acxa tried to navigate the minefield of emotions that she had found herself marooned in. “My motivations have never changed. I wish to make the Empire a better place, and my actions have always reflected that.”

“And yet,” Allura’s gaze burned holes through Galran battle armor, “You stood idly by a madman. Reaping the benefits of Lotor’s ascension to the throne.”

“I believed in Lotor’s vision.” Acxa met Princess Allura’s gaze with assured defiance. “None of you know what it’s like… to be a halfbreed in the Empire.” Acxa's eyes searched for some semblance of sympathy within the Altean, “Left to die, abandoned in some alleyway by a scorned mother who looks at you and only sees the Imperial Soldier who raped her... and not the child crying out to be comforted. We don’t have rights. We don’t have anything at all. The best we can aim for is service in the Empire, and yet- even then, we’re disposable.” Her fists clenched as she bared her teeth to memories past. “All we amount to are janitors and cannon-fodder. Even our fellow soldiers despise us.” 

The room stilled as Acxa regained her composure. 

“Lotor was a halfbreed as well.” She continued, the professionalism returning to her voice, “He found us, uplifted us, and gave us a future to believe in. A future where the circumstances of our birth didn’t dictate the lives we could live. He told me, _‘What makes us different is what makes us stronger’_. I believed in him.” She sighed, “I believed in him until it was finally clear that the man we followed into darkness and back had been lost somewhere along the way.”

The tension was cut by the door to the conference room hissing open, a large Galran commander stepping through the door and studying the assembly before him. 

“Warlord Bogh.” Acxa offered her superior the classic Galran salute- her right fist slamming against the breastplate of her armor. 

“At ease, Acxa.” Bogh waved his hand, dismissing her gesture as if to eliminate the air of formality to the meeting. “Paladins, it has been quite some time since we last crossed paths.”

“ _Heeeeeey_ , wait a tick. Don’t we know you?” Hunk squinted his eyes at the massive Galra before the tendrils of recognition worked their way into his memory. “Yeah! You were at the Omega Shield!”

“That is correct, Yellow Paladin.” Bogh offered his hand to Hunk, and the human clasped the Galra’s wrist in what was the standard greeting for friends and allies. “Not a day goes by where I do not recall the actions of Voltron in saving a Galra planet. Nor that it took a human to remind me of my pride as a soldier. Thank you.”

Bogh offered his arm to Keith,“I do not believe that we have met, Paladin.” Keith took it, clasping the man’s forearm in respect to the battles he and his team had fought together. 

“I’m Keith.” The Red Paladin jerked his head in the direction of the others amongst their ranks. “That’s Coran, Romelle, Krolia, and Kosmo.” Having named the wolf _‘Kosmo’_ did still seem off putting to Keith, but the wolf seemed to have accepted it… and admittedly, it was better than constantly referring to him as _‘wolf’_.

Bogh turned and nodded in the direction of the others present, but his eyes spent more time inspecting the strands of braided fabric wrapped around the Red Paladin’s wrist. 

“Hey,” Hunk interjected. “What happened to the other guy that was with you…? Lahn…? Was that his name…?”

“Yes. Lieutenant Lahn has seen fit to self-aggrandize himself as Warlord Lahn.” Bogh released Keith’s forearm and cleared his throat. “The remnants of the Empire have splintered. Lahn rallied some of my subordinates and declared his fealty to Commander Sendak’s ‘Fire of Purification’.” 

“And who did you declare your loyalty to?” Krolia asked the self-acclaimed Warlord.

“I am not loyal to any petty faction. We... are the Galran Empire. Our loyalties lie with the people we have sworn to protect. The Omega Shield installation was but a single outpost. Without the stability and security of the Empire, _many_ planets in this system would fall prey to pirate attacks or worse. Myself and a few other commanders within the regent have dedicated ourselves to maintaining the peace.”

“You’re protecting them. Even those who aren’t Galra?” Shiro asked.

“Of course.” Bogh replied, “It is a soldier’s duty to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Acxa here has been assisting us with policing the supply lines within the quadrant.” 

Acxa stepped forward. “Zethrid and Ezor made themselves a problem when they commandeered an Acolyte-Class Battlecruiser and started raiding medical shipments bound for the local inhabitants of this sector. My mission was to reclaim their cruiser. It was blind-luck that our paths happened to intersect when they did.”

“Most fortuitous, indeed.” Bogh pulled up a star-chart, the hologram projector in the center of the table flooding the small room with a detailed projection of the sector of space they currently occupied. “We have but a small fleet available to patrol this sector. With the way the Empire has been fracturing, hope has been in short supply- but with Voltron’s return, surely that would-”

“ _Whoa. Whoa, whoa._ ” Lance stopped Bogh dead in his tracks. “What do you mean Voltron’s _‘return’?_ It’s not like we’ve been anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Pidge wrinkled her nose, “It’s like what that big bitch kept asking us. They wanted to know _‘where we’ve been all this time’_.” Pidge threw up air-quotes with her fingers. “What did they mean?”

Both Bogh and Acxa looked at each other with expressions of bewilderment. 

“Paladins, do you really not know?” 

Acxa opened and closed her mouth, a false start to words she couldn’t really find. “Your fight with Lotor… that was three decapheobs ago.”

Pidge’s eyes widened, and she and Hunk both turned to each other with the same shocked expression as they simultaneously exclaimed. “The Castle!”

“Oh, of course!” Coran exclaimed. “How could we have forgotten to factor in the time dilation?”

“Excuse me but, I’m a bit lost here.” Romelle raised her hand as if to signal to the rest of the group that she still existed. 

“Well,” Pidge started. “When reality was collapsing in on itself, we needed to close up the rifts. We did so by overloading the Teleduv inside the Castle of Lions.”

“Right, we were all there for that.” Lance sighed, characteristically missing the point. 

“ _Riiiiiiiight,_ ” Hunk picked up where Pidge left off. “When the Teleduv overloaded, it created a brief flash of infinite mass. Essentially creating a black hole right where the rift was expanding, so that the two would cancel each other out.”

“And we were apparently too close to that explosion!” Coran finished for the trio.

“I still don’t get it.” Lance said.

“Gravity distorts time.” Keith sighed, placing a hand over his stomach, where phantom pains started to reappear at the mere mention of the concept. “The stronger the gravity, the slower the time. We were right next to the Castle when it exploded into a black hole. What was a brief flash of an explosion to us, was three years for the rest of the universe.”

Keith bit down on his tongue, closing his eyes as he relived the months of trauma that he had endured from every second of his mate’s suffering. Krolia appeared at her son’s side, resting her hand at the base of Keith’s neck like the gentle reassurance a mother would offer her kit. It helped. 

“We need to get back home.” Shiro said, “Warlord Bogh, is there any way you could spare a cruiser to hyper-jump us to where we need to go?”

Bogh hung his head in disappointment, “I’m afraid not, Paladin. My forces are stretched thin enough as is. Our hold on the region is delicate. I’m afraid the best I can offer is to provide you with all the supplies you may need for your journey, and a place to rest should you need it.”

“No.” Pidge answered on the behalf of the entire group, “We need to get home. _Immediately_.”

“I understand the sentiment, Green Paladin. In which case we will provide you with all the food and water we can spare.” Bogh nodded in Pidge’s direction. “Few of us are lucky enough to make it back to our homeworld. I wish you good fortune in your journey.”

Pidge nodded back at the Warlord, finding a tepid understanding with the aliens of which had kidnapped her family and enslaved the universe.

“Do you have any information about the Blade of Marmora?” Keith asked. His heart was racing as he tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. 

“Nothing recent, I’m afraid. Roughly a decapheob ago, we received reports that the Blades were massing forces on Kar’Dam, in the Hazopt Sector... here.” Bogh pointed to a small dot being projected into the air by the hologram. “We don’t have any information past that.”

Keith met Krolia’s gaze for a brief moment. “Then that’s where we’re headed.”

“Keith,” Pidge interrupted, “Kar’Dam is in the _opposite_ direction of home. We’d be making a major detour and be losing several _days_ of travel.” 

“Yeah, weren’t we all just talking about how we needed to be going _home_?” Hunk added. 

“This isn’t up for debate!” Keith shouted, unwittingly grasping for the bond bracelet around his wrist, seeking its comfort amongst all this conflict. “We’re finding the Blades. End of discussion.”

“The Blades could already be dead, for all we know.” Allura offered with casual indifference, as if she viewed the loss of so many Galra allies as a mere statistic. 

But Keith could feel the weight of what each of those deaths might entail, and his heart sank into the depths of his stomach at the implication of Allura’s callous remark.

“Well,” Lance said, “Shiro, what do you think?”

“Shiro isn’t the leader of Voltron anymore, I am! And I say that we’re going!” Keith barked at Lance.

“Keith, enough!” Shiro ended Keith’s tirade, and if Keith was any more Galra- his ears would have folded back against his head in a show of submission at having been yelled at like a misbehaving child. “This isn’t how you lead a team.”

Keith stared at Shiro with big, vulnerable eyes. The piercing purple of his iris’ a blooming aster, capturing Shiro’s attention with the bleeding of his wounded heart. Shiro could feel the turmoil bubbling up in Keith through the bond they shared with the Black Lion, the unspoken agony bleeding from one heart to another, and Keith’s plea could be heard in Shiro’s own mind as clear as day.

_Please… I need to know._

Shiro let out a heavy sigh. “Keith _is_ right.” _He wasn’t_. But he couldn’t deny Keith this opportunity. “We’ll make our way to Kar’Dam and attempt to establish contact with the Blade of Marmora.”

Shiro’s words and agreement should have given Keith the solace he had needed to hold his anxiety at bay but he could feel the _doubt_ filling that small part within the back of his mind. Shiro _doubted_ their itinerary and he _doubted_ his decisions, and that doubt wounded Keith. He knew that he would never again have the unwavering support that Vrek had always given him, but… despite Shiro’s reluctance, he _had_ backed him up, and that would be enough for now. 

“Then it’s settled.” The thanks that Keith would offer Shiro would be silent, but it would be felt all the same. “Everyone, get to your Lions.”

The group filtered out of the room, with the Paladins and their company being led back to their waiting Lions by Acxa and a detachment of sentries. Keith was the last to leave, eager to make his way back to the Blades… to the only family that had ever truly accepted him. But Keith’s hasty retreat was impeded as Warlord Bogh called back out to him. 

“Red Paladin? Keith?” 

Keith turned, already halfway out the door and clearly signaling that he wanted to leave. “Is there something else, Warlord Bogh?”

Bogh nodded to the bracelet strapped around Keith’s wrist, and Keith instinctively covered it with his other hand. But instead of being met with condemnation or criticism, Bogh instead offered up his own wrist, fishing out a similar looking bond-bracelet from beneath the concealing sleeve of his battle armor. 

“We Galra must be loyal to our friends and lethal to our enemies. But one must not forget that enemies and honor are but a pale substitute for the ones we cherish. From one Galra to another-” Bogh slammed his fist against his chest in a Galran salute, _“Vrepit Sa.”_

Keith eyed the warlord with suspicion, his eyes narrowing as he let the disdain for his Galran heritage be known to the Warlord, “I don’t do that. I’m not one of your soldiers.”

“Perhaps the meaning of the gesture has eroded over time.” Bogh sighed, weary that so much of the nuance of their culture had been lost to hollow tradition. Steeling himself, he repeated the gesture, holding up the wrist that proudly displayed his own bond bracelet. “Our salute isn’t just an acknowledgement of our orders nor of our superiors. We hold our bond bracelets over our souls as a reminder of the loved ones that we fight for.”

Keith stared at the blue and black bond bracelet that adorned Bogh’s wrist, now keenly aware of its strategic position over the center of the Galra’s chest. Sparing a look down to his own bracelet, Keith pinched the braided strands of fabric between his fingers as he lost himself in the thought. Both Keith and Vrek resented certain aspects of their lineage… but in spite of that… it wasn’t all bad. 

“Thanks…” Keith didn’t spare another look towards Bogh before he left the room, returning to the hangar bay that housed the Black Lion. 

Keith spent the duration of his trek back to the hangar with his head tilted down towards the floor and his eyes locked passionately upon his bond bracelet. The soft rumbling of the Black Lion itself led Keith back to the safety of its cockpit, allowing Keith to slide back into deep thought as his feet shuffled forward and carried him to where he needed to go.

It wasn’t until Keith found himself sitting down in the pilot’s seat of the Black Lion did he hear Shiro calling out for him, not with his words, but through their bond.

_Keith…?_

Keith flinched, having been pulled from his pondering with all the tact of a bucket of ice water being dumped atop him. “Shiro. I’m here. Sorry, I’m here.”

“Okay. I thought I lost you there for a minute.” Shiro smiled down at Keith, offering Keith the warmth that all of his humanity could provide. 

“Sorry, Shiro. I was… someplace else.” Keith finally pulled his fingers away from his bond bracelet, making a conscious effort to place both his hands on the joysticks to the Black Lion so as to not be distracted by the thoughts that lingered in his head. “Thanks for backing me up in there. I appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem. But Keith, you have to be aware that as leader of Voltron, you can’t let your temper get the better of you…” 

The words from Shiro’s lecture drifted away, with Keith’s own focus wandering back to the bracelet hanging off of his wrist. The rest of the world faded into nothingness, until all he could see was the bands of black, purple, orange and red that encircled his wrist. With Shiro’s presence being all but inconsequential, Keith’s thoughts were once again returned to the idea of being reunited with the Blades: of seeing Kolivan and having to stomach another one of his reprimands, of hugging Regris and feeling that tight coil of muscle that he called a tail wrap around his waist, of challenging Antok with his own short defiance that refused to melt under Antok’s intensity, of talking to Lastor about ‘The Empire’s Dancingest Champions’, of having to deflect Ganda’s lewd comments, or having to sidestep Ilun’s long winded tangents about Galran history.

Keith missed his family.

But most of all… he missed Vrek. 

_Please let me be wrong._ The thought plagued Keith’s mind. _Please be okay. Please let me see you again._

More than anything, Keith just wanted to rush into the arms of his mate. To be scented. To be held. To be _loved_. Despite everything he had felt in the Quantum Abyss, despite all the agony that he had endured- he had still seen Vrek in his future, and that gave him hope.

And the miserable have no other medicine but only hope. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artist Credit: @greenerghosty on Twitter/ tumblr/ and Instagram
> 
> First of all, let me say that I'm quite proud of this chapter, it's the first chapter to really branch out into having different perspectives from an ever-growing cast of characters. Being that it was my first time bringing these characters into the fold of this story, I hope that I was able to capture their voices- but if you feel there are any inconsistencies with the way one of these characters speak, please let me know so I can attempt to address that in future chapters. 
> 
> Secondly, words cannot express how much I love @greenerghosty's renditions of Keith and Vrek- they surprised me with this piece and it nearly shattered my heart with how adorable it is, and I'm very glad to be able to share it with you all here. If you haven't given them a follow on their respective social media, please do so!
> 
> What did you think of this chapter? For all the lovely Sheith-ers who took a gander at this story, I sincerely hope that I'm able to do Shiro justice- and portray his relationship with Keith in a romantic, yet distinctly different way from Keith's former relationship with Vrek. As always, your comments are beyond inspiring! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter!


	4. Those Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Paladins arrive to a distant world hoping to find the Blade of Marmora. Instead, they are confronted with a Druid named Macidus.

Kar’Dam was once a beautiful world, a peaceful world whose denizens valued the idiosyncrasy that was endemic to all life in the universe. Being on the far fringes of an otherwise inhospitable system, the people of Kar’Dam lived in relative seclusion, aware of the malevolence of the Galra Empire but having taken no part in the war itself. For so long, their world had been left untouched by the fires of war, their soil not yet tainted by the blood spilled from the Galra’s merciless expansion. War, for those of Kar’Dam, existed in their minds as a mere concept: the Galra’s quest of extermination and oppression running counter to the preservation and admiration of life which denoted their ideals. 

When Kolivan and what remained of his Blades had limped their way to Kar’Dam, the civilians were more than eager to provide port of harbor to the battle-weary soldiers. The Blades shared the tales of their struggles against the Empire, and the people of Kar’Dam were enamored not only by the heroism of their actions, but by the assortment of hybrids and half-breeds that filled out the ranks of these rebels. 

For the first time, the Blades found themselves under the scrutiny of curious eyes and were not be met with contempt or disgust… but instead, with awe. The people of Kar’Dam fawned over the Blades, as many -like Regris- existed as remnant reminders of species that had been annihilated by the Galra. To find those whose heritage lay both within the prosperity of the conquerors and the echoes of the extinct was a somber, yet beautiful existence. The people of Kar’Dam welcomed the Blades into their homes and into their lives, offering them food, shelter, and (what was most alien to the Blades) acceptance. 

The members of the Blade of Marmora had found a safe-haven where they would not be scorned for an existence of which they did not ask for; instead, they would be cherished for the uniqueness that they brought to the universe. For a single, fleeting moment, they had found peace. But this peace was short-lived, as the Empire wasted little time in their pursuit of the Blades, determined to eradicate the treasonous impurity that Kolivan and his spies represented. 

Kolivan begged the civilians to evacuate, to flee with their lives while the Blades drew the focus of the attack away from their homes. But the people of Kar’Dam declined: unable to abandon those who had arrived seeking their help and unwilling to flee while the Galra trampled the ideals of which they held so sacred. And so, the people of Kar’Dam -the peaceful people of whom had no prior experience with violence- took up arms.

The line in the sand would be etched in stone by the hearts of pacifists, for if they could not defend the convictions that they lived for, then their lives would be but hollow morals abandoned alongside the consecrated grounds of their planet. 

  
  
  


They would fight. 

  
  


  
  
And they would lose. 

  
  
  
  
  


Kolivan had led his people here, he had led them to Kar’Dam.

He had led the Blades to their deaths, and dragged down an entire civilization in the process. 

He had led these people to ruin.

Kar’Dam was once a beautiful world, a peaceful world, and now- _ruins_ were all that remained.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


The Paladins found but a single survivor amongst the burned out rubble of the fallen civilization.

He referred to himself as Macidus, and he had led the group into a network of caverns hidden beneath the last vestiges of a devastated people and of a murdered planet. The cave that he called home reeked of death, and the Paladins could but attempt to stifle a gag at the hideous stench of the sanctuary that sheltered them from the merciless cold on the surface of Kar’Dam. 

As Macidus recounted the battle that had decimated this world, he held the attention of all those present, chief amongst them being Keith- who had been so eager in seeking answers to find what he had lost.

But while Macidus regaled the tale of the valiant Blades who fought for a lost cause, the dark inkling of doubt started to seep into Krolia’s instincts. Her mind already a complex web of mistrust and skepticism, it took only but a small glint of familiar luxite found in the corner of her eye to stoke the embers of her paranoia. 

Krolia pulled back the heavy fabric of a curtain to reveal rows upon rows of luxite stacked atop each other, displayed like trophies against the damp wall of the cave. She reached out, hesitantly removing one particular knife off of the wall: it was Kolivan’s. 

Her actions pulled everyone’s focus away from Macidus, and Keith immediately found himself pulled to the wall with an unspoken urgency as his eyes scanned the weapons before him. Keith was searching, both desperate to find the blade that would all but confirm his mate’s demise, while also praying not to find such answers… hoping beyond reason that Vrek might still be alive somewhere, awaiting his return. 

Sweat beaded on his brow as every familiar blade stabbed at his chest with both intense anguish and selfish relief, a mixture of emotions that left a sour taste in his mouth. 

Lastor… Kihan… Ahara… Giz… Schippa… _Ilun…_ the casualties were almost countless. There were blades he recognized, blades whose owners he could clearly hear, reverberating in the inner sanctum of his memories, Blades whose laughter could be heard echoing throughout the hallways of the base. The knives lining the wall were not only a memorial to the dead members of a forgotten order, but they were the final pages in the stories of so many of Keith’s brothers and sisters. These Blades were not only people of whom Keith had fought beside, but they were the family that Keith had lived alongside. These were people that Keith had _loved_ , and now, he was faced with the grim reality that they were all _gone_. 

Keith pushed aside cabinetry, shoving aside Macidus’ supplies as he kept uncovering _more_ blades: everywhere he turned, every place he searched, there were _more_ blades. Yet still, Keith was robbed of the information that he was dreading, yet sorely needed. 

Krolia presented the blade that she had been holding to Keith and, in her outstretched arms- Keith was left confronted with Kolivan’s blade. 

A voice startled Keith out of his grief, “I’m sorry, Keith. But Vrek’s blade is not amongst those here.” Macidus offered the Paladin words laced with sincerity: an apology that he could not provide the grieving boy with the closure he required. 

Keith took the blade out of Krolia’s grasp, the knife of their leader seeming like a sword compared to Keith’s diminutive frame. He squeezed the hilt of the sword in his hands, closing his eyes tight to prevent the tears from dousing the fires of his anger as he leveled the tip of the sword at their host. “How do you know _that name?”_

“You see, all the blades here were collected from those that fell by my hand.” Macidus stated rather matter-of-factly. “And, last I saw your mate, he was still breathing.” The cloaked figure leaned back in his chair, chuckling to himself as if reminded of some amusing factoid. “He might have been _screaming_ , sure… but he was still breathing when I left him.”

Bayards materialized, weapons were charged, and swords were aimed at the shadowy figure whose mere presence began to unnerve the battle-hardened Paladins. 

“Who exactly are you?” Allura questioned. 

“What is the matter, Princess Allura? Have you failed to recognize me from our battle at Galra High Command?” Macidus let loose a sinister laugh, “Or you, Keith? From our skirmish at the Universal Station? Tell me, does your hand still tremble at the memory of the pain I caused you?”

A predatory growl slipped past Keith’s humanity, his fangs bared at the…

  
  
  


… at the _Druid_. 

  
  
  


Keith’s entire body was a coiled spring, his words spoken through his clenched jaw, “Pain no longer frightens me.”

Macidus stood, the sudden movement causing Lance to flinch as he took aim at the Druid’s head. The tension in the room was palpable- the Paladin’s keenly aware of the damage a single Druid could unleash. The room was brought to a standstill, like two cobras ready to strike at one another. 

“Well then,” The smile that stretched across his mutilated face didn’t have to be seen, as it could be heard in his voice. “I suppose that means you’ll _die_ braver than the Blades on that wall.”

Keith moved first, Kolivan’s blade thrust out before him as he lunged at Macidus with impressive speed. However, no amount of speed could account for the reaction time of the Komar. As the blade in Keith’s hands failed to greet its intended victim, Macidus evaporated into a cloud of dark mist and vanished into the ether, leaving in his stead a small cylindrical device as a parting gift to the Paladins. 

“NO!”

Before the device could detonate, the empty space next to Keith vibrated. The taste of burnt atmosphere overwhelmed Keith’s senses a mere fraction of a second before his cosmic wolf sparked into existence at his side. Kosmo pressed his side up against Keith’s thigh, saving Keith and Keith alone before he could be trapped in the stasis field that Macidus had deployed. 

With an incandescent flash of blue energy, Keith and Kosmo were teleported elsewhere within Macidus’ labyrinth of tunnels. The cavern that Keith and Kosmo now found themselves in was dark, having only been briefly illuminated by the lingering crackle of lightning that ignited the air around the duo’s sudden appearance. 

Keith rested his hand in the luminescent blue fur between Kosmo’s shoulder blades, his fingers burying themselves in the soft security that he could find in the depths of these caverns- in the proverbial belly of the beast. His hand began to tremble as he stared into the shadows before him, lost, and seeing no way out of the dark. 

Kosmo turned back to nudge Keith’s side, a soft whimper escaping the mighty beast. 

“Yeah… I know, buddy.” Keith whispered. He may be lost in the darkness, but he was not alone. 

With a flick of his wrist, Keith activated the torch on his forearm, using the small cone of light to cut through the blackness and continue on through the network of caves. 

The two traversed the caverns for some time, some unbidden force guiding Keith deeper beneath the surface of Kar’Dam. At the crossroads of yet another intersection, the massive blade still held tight in Keith’s hand hummed to life, a small flicker of purple energy coursing through the sword from the hilt to the sharpened edge. The pulse summoned Keith’s attention to the serrated luxite.

“Kolivan…?”

Keith turned his attention to Kosmo, “We need to find him. He’s gotta be here.”

Keith picked up his pace, his steps carrying him forward with renewed vigor as he held Kolivan’s sword out in front of him, letting the blade guide him to its owner like a beacon in the night. The path before them narrowed, forcing Keith to slide himself between jagged stone walls of his naturally formed hellhole. Kolivan’s blade thrummed to life within Keith’s grasp, urging him onwards until the namesake of his order shined bright with the fires of life.

The corridor opened up into a massive room, the wide walls and high ceiling of the subterranean dwelling seeming like a colosseum in comparison to the claustrophobic passageways they had trekked through. Light shined down into the room from a spotlight, aimed straight down to highlight the body suspended in the center of the room. 

“Kolivan!” As Keith rushed to Kolivan’s side, Kosmo made himself busy by circling the perimeter of the vast cavern they were now in.

The man was restrained, arms and legs bound in the air like an animal being bled. His hair was unkempt, his eyes sunken in from sleep deprivation, and his malnourished build but a shadow of the once imposing leader of the Blades. Keith used a single, fluid motion to use the injured Blade’s own sword to cut through his shackles, and Kolivan’s arms fell in place around Keith’s shoulders. Keith shoved the luxite sword into the soft soil beneath his feet so that he could use both of his hands to steady him, adjusting Kolivan’s weight so that he would not fall to the floor.

“Keith…?” Kolivan’s voice was weak, the soft apprehension in his voice so unlike the commanding surety that Keith had once exuded. Kolivan shook some of his senses back into his brain, letting his cognizance return to him in a flash of unbridled fear. “Keith! You can’t be here! You need to get out! Macidus, he-” 

“A druid, I know.” Keith grunted with effort as he reached back down, pulling Kolivan’s sword out of the ground and returning the blade to its master’s grasp. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.” Keith turned his head away from Kolivan, avoiding the pained look of guilt that resided deep in his leader’s eyes. “Kos, you find anything?”

Kosmo let out a soft whine as he padded his way back over to Keith, the brilliant hues of blue slinking their way out of the shadows and crossing the room. Kosmo returned with something, a long object clasped in his jaw. When he returned to Keith, he set the object down in the dirt in front of them. 

Keith set Kolivan down on the floor, shining his light on the object that his wolf had presented to him.

It was another blade. The luxite was solid black, as dead and lifeless as the other blades that Macidus had kept in the cave above them. 

He turned, shining his light back against the side of the cave that Kosmo had emerged from, and casting away that shadows that had concealed another body of a blade. This other Blade was strung up against the wall like a trophy displayed above a mantle, his face a distorted mess of scars: mutilated and burned beyond recognition- wounds set and healed over from decades past, and not from his unfortunate and ill-fated arrival on Kar’Dam. Keith didn’t recognize the face, but the massive frame coupled with the discarded sword now at his feet only pointed to a single person. 

“Antok?” Before Keith started to make a move towards the man chained up against the far wall, Kolivan grabbed at his arm and stayed his feet.

“No, Keith…” Kolivan’s eyes failed to meet Keith’s gaze, the shame from his inability to save but a single Blade… _especially_ the man he loved… crushing his resolve and making him unable to look at anything other than the sword before him. “He didn’t… he didn’t make it.”

Keith nodded at Kolivan, resting a hand upon his shoulder in an attempt to find any sort of condolences that might ease his leader’s suffering. But no words seemed worthy of easing the burden that Kolivan was shouldering. 

_“Ah yes_ , the Cybrachian hybrid. He lasted longer than I expected.” A shade danced in the corner of Keith’s vision, as Macidus’ voice seemed to echo throughout the chamber while his physical self remained veiled in the darkness found beyond the small cone of light emanating from the center of the room. “But that is the nature of Galran hybrids. They’re always so much more resilient than we give them credit for. You don’t really get to test their mettle until you start to take them apart.” 

The druid's words pulled a growl out of the Blades’ leader. Kolivan tightened his grip around the hilt of his sword and collected Antok’s blade off of the ground to wield both weapons against the one who had taken everything from him. He attempted to push himself to his feet, trying to muster what strength he could to slay the monster that was lurking in the dark, but he was too weak… and no sooner had he stood upright did he find himself collapsing back against the floor.

“No, let me.” Keith unsheathed his own Marmoran knife, and baring both blade and fangs towards the darkness. 

“I don’t know how you escaped the stasis field… but no matter,” Macidus’ silhouette drifted back against the cave wall, attempting to lure the intruders away from the light. “You’ve merely moved up the timetable of your execution. I was hoping to kill you in front of Haggar… but it seems I will settle for killing you in front of Kolivan.”

Keith and Kosmo ventured out into the darkness, taking cautious steps away from Kolivan and into the unknown. Macidus’ demented laughter swirled around them, a call from the place where nightmares lay in wait for the setting sun. Kosmo and Keith both answered Macidus with a growl, a warning to the universe for the blood that was to be spilled. 

The ravenous jaws of death were open and awaiting tribute, eager to see which of these combatants would be the one to fall in sacrifice to its hunger. 

The Paladin and his wolf were consumed in the dark, entering the trap that the druid had laid for them. But the path towards the light was pioneered by those who were unfazed by darkness, and the only option Keith would have would be to spring the trap. 

Once Kosmo and Keith had been truly blinded by the shadows, Macidus attacked. 

Lightning erupted from blackness, a sickening bolt of energy that traveled straight towards Keith. Keith held his sword out in front of him, letting the luxite absorb the energy that was fired his way before burying the tip of the weapon into the floor below, grounding the lightning and letting the energy dissipate harmlessly in the dirt. 

Keith readied himself again, his eyes searching for even the slightest hint of movements.

The air shifted beside him, a presence manifesting itself in his blind spot. 

Keith activated the energy shield on his gauntlet, the hard-light buckling as the druid sank his pointed talons into the Paladin’s defense. Through the blue barrier between them, Keith stared into the deadened eyes of the sadistic druid; the intent to kill was imbued deep within the merciless yellow of the Komar’s gaze. Keith glared back at Macidus, that same hideous intention mirrored in his own eyes. 

As quickly as Macidus had appeared, he disappeared once more: evaporating into a cloud of black mist the second Keith had attempted to swing his sword at him. 

The cavern stilled once more as silence befell the blackness of the battleground. Keith was made painfully aware of the discomforting noiselessness of the room as he was deafened by the beating of his own frantic heartbeat. 

Macidus reappeared before them. 

Keith felt the fur rise along Kosmo’s spine as the beast snarled at the druid. Macidus was charging straight towards them, his hands glowing a sickly energy as he leveled his vile magic at the pair. Macidus cast another bolt of lighting towards Keith, but before the Red Paladin could organize a defense, the wolf at his side pressed up against his thigh, and teleported them.

In a single flash of unstable energy, Keith and Kosmo emerged from nothingness to appear behind Macidus’ back. Kosmo’s maneuver had not only allowed the two of them to dodge the incoming attack, but it had also given them the edge in battle. 

Unprepared to have one of his own tricks used against him, the druid’s shock left him defenseless as the cosmic wolf’s razor sharp teeth sank into his forearm. The sudden pain focused Macidus back within the moment, allowing him to side-step the blade wielded by the Red Paladin. He had underestimated the half-breed and his pet, and had nearly cost him his arm. 

Keith advanced on the Komar, forcing Macidus to retreat as he continued to press his attack. With Kosmo’s jaws locked firmly around their opponent’s arm, Macidus wouldn’t be teleporting anywhere. Keith thrust his sword out towards the druid, spinning the blade in his grasp to dominate the space between the combatants. Macidus would move, twisting himself in a panicked attempt to avoid the bite of luxite. 

“ENOUGH!” Tired of this charade, Macidus made a tactical decision: he stepped into Keith’s blade, allowing the luxite to sink into the meat of his shoulder. Immediate, searing pain clawed at the druid, but the attack had failed to hit anything of vital importance, and with the Paladin’s sword now held captive, Macidus was allotted the concentration he required to act. 

Using his free hand, Macidus cast a single bolt of lightning squarely into the beast still latched on to his arm. 

With a pained yelp, the Cosmic Wolf released his hold on the druid, the force of the lightning hurtling the animal off its feet and rolling to a stop a harmless distance away. 

“Kosmo!” Keith’s eyes left his opponent to follow the mass of fur that had landed some distance away. For a brief second, Macidus was forgotten, as Keith’s focus was drawn to the sight of his injured companion. The cosmic wolf did not attempt to get up, but he still drew breath: Kosmo was injured… but alive. 

By the time Keith had allowed himself to return to the present, Macidus had vanished…

… only to reappear directly behind him. 

Macidus placed his hand on Keith’s back, and despite the armor and the temperature-regulating undersuit, Keith could _feel_ the icy sting of the druid’s touch. A putrid glow emanated from Macidus’ hand as he drew Keith’s strength out of his body and into his own. 

Suddenly overcome with a bone-aching exhaustion, Keith collapsed against the floor as the druid sapped him of all his energy. Keith’s body ceased to obey his commands as he felt his blade slip from his grasp, falling against the dirt as Macidus feasted upon his quintessence. 

“ _OooOoooOh_ , you are _delicious_.” The wounds that Macidus had sustained from their skirmish instantly closed, as the injuries to his arm and shoulder knitted themselves back together until no evidence remained of his battle with the Red Paladin. 

Macidus crouched down, following Keith to the floor so that he could properly bask in the pain he had caused the boy. Their faces mere inches apart as Macidus studied every wince and every contorted expression of agony that Keith could display. He reveled in his suffering. 

“You’ve fought valiantly, Paladin. But this was inevitable.” The battle was hard-fought, moreso than he would have expected from one so young. “You fight like a Galra…” 

Keith stared up at Macidus, his eyes burning as he willed life back into his limp body so that he could be the revenant to bring righteous wrath down upon this abomination. His anger fueled him as he reached up to grab the sides of the druid’s head, pulling himself up so that he could sink his fangs into the cold, dead flesh of Macidus’ face. The taste was bitter, and the texture was gravelly; as soon as the black, coagulated blood filled Keith’s mouth, he pulled away, tearing a chunk of flesh out of the druid’s face and spitting the rend piece of meat onto the floor. 

Macidus screamed, both in shock and in pain, and Keith used that momentary confusion to throw the druid over himself. The wind was stolen from Macidus’ lungs when he impacted against the ground; the druid found himself on his back, his face bleeding profusely and his eyes staring up at the cave’s ceiling. 

Keith wasted no time: he rolled to his feet and he straddled the druid’s chest, effectively pinning the druid to the floor. He punched Macidus, slamming his fist into the Komar’s grey skin with little form or elegance as he excised his rage on the druid’s face. 

Keith crushed Macidus’ face beneath his gloved fist, again and again and again, numbing his knuckles from the repeated trauma as he painted the Komar with swashes of black and blue- his skin a mere canvas for Keith’s aggression.

The druid retaliated, holding his hands up to Keith to emit a blinding flash of light in the space between them. 

Keith registered the weightlessness of sailing through the air before he acknowledged the stinging pain concentrated in the center of the chest. Macidus had struck him with some form of energy, and that energy had thrown him clear across the room. His back smashed against the cave wall, the seared plating of his Paladin armor smoking as electricity danced across the metal. 

Before Keith could even entertain the notion of moving, Macidus had appeared before him, the battered and bruised druid’s look one of distaste after Keith’s beating had successfully managed to smear that sadistic smile off of his face. Keith could do nothing but stare defiantly back into the eyes of the Komar, and that was a victory in of itself.

“You know… killing the Blades… that was _fun_.” Macidus crouched down to level his eyes with Keith’s, “But killing _you?_ This will be so much sweeter. Are you watching, Kolivan?”

 _“Intently.”_ The voice was spoken much closer and much clearer than Macidus was expecting. 

Kolivan gripped the back of the druid’s collar, lifting the monster off of Keith to slam him back against the cavern wall. 

Macidus’ panicked expression quickly morphed into one of pain as Kolivan drove his blade cleanly through the druid’s stomach, burying the blade in the stone behind him and effectively mounting the druid to the wall. 

Kolivan took a step back, looking the druid over as if inspecting his own work, before unsheathing a second blade, _Antok’s,_ and driving it through the druid beside his own. With the width of two swords so passionately buried in the druid’s gut, Macidus was very nearly bisected.

_Nearly, but not quite._

Kolivan leaned in close to Macidus, his nostrils flaring as he bathed in the strong scent of pain that was rolling off of the Komar. Kolivan, the leader of an order fallen and sole survivor to a murdered family, looked into the eyes of the one who had rained destruction down upon his life… and searched the druid’s soul for some semblance of regret or remorse.

He found none. 

“Look at me.” Kolivan grabbed Macidus’ face, forcing the druid to meet his gaze. “I want you to die knowing that you _did not_ defeat us.”

In the months that he had spent torturing Kolivan, Macidus had become intimately familiar with the golden eyes of the Blades’ leader: recognizing the pain, the anguish, and the grief that plagued the most Galran aspect of his features. But now, those same eyes that had been all but extinguished before the Paladin’s arrival, burned with the intensity of a man demanding vengeance. And in that moment… Macidus knew fear.

 _“Vrepit Sa.”_ Kolivan whispered. He gripped the front of Macidus’ clothes, and _pulled_. 

Kolivan ripped the upper half of Macidus’ body off of the wall, while the two blades buried in his gut kept the lower half pinned to the side of the cave. Macidus’ ear-piercing shriek all but drowned out the sickening sound of muscle and intestine being torn asunder, as the druid was sheared in half by Kolivan’s might.

Black sludge oozed out of the Komar’s wounds: rotted intestines and organs falling out of a body that had been unnaturally sustained for centuries off of stolen quintessence and borrowed time. Macidus’ body had died long ago, and now- the duty fell to Kolivan to reap what the druid had sown. Kolivan held the Macidus’ gaze, watching intently as the screaming subsided and his life started to fade away. 

Kolivan dropped the severed torso to the ground, letting the druid’s tainted, coagulated blood seep into the soil below. With his revenge satiated, Kolivan’s strength abandoned him, and he dropped to the floor beside Keith. 

The two sat in relative quiet until Keith regained control of his limbs. Leaving Kolivan’s side, Keith weakly crawled his way over to the cosmic wolf that still laid motionless on the floor.

Keith rested his hand against the side of Kosmo’s midnight-black fur, feeling the gentle rise and fall of the creature’s breathing. Kosmo’s fur was singed from the sparks of electricity that Macidus had unleashed upon him, but otherwise, the wolf was fine. The giant beast opened its eyes, and Keith sighed in relief as the wolf turned his head to deliver him an affectionate lick across the side of his cheek. 

Keith patted the wolf’s head, and Kosmo responded by nudging the Paladin’s hand away, as if to tell him that his wounds were minor and not worth doting over. Words were not needed as the two nodded at each other, a silent form of communication as the wolf assured Keith, 

_I’ll be fine. Go._

Reluctantly, Keith pushed himself to his feet, turning back to face Kolivan.

“What happened here?”

The words hung in the air between the two Blades, neither of them wanting to confront the reality that their order had been all but eradicated. Kolivan closed his eyes, pushing a long drag of air out of nose as he considered all the mistakes that had led him here. After a weighted pause, Kolivan answered the young Blade. 

  
  
  


“I failed.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Everyone helped to carry what blades they could, removing the trophies from Macidus’ wall so that they could be returned to the surface. The Paladins worked diligently, each of them carrying a stack of swords in their arms reminiscent of the way one would carry a bundle of firewood to a campfire. They would make an effort to remove every blade from the cave in a single trip, each of them desperate to leave behind the lair of the druid and never return. 

Kolivan led the Paladins through the ruins of the one-great civilization, navigating their way through the bombed out buildings, the impact craters, and the blood stained foundations until they had finally arrived at the remains of a building on the edge of the settlement, perched atop the ridge overlooking the valley below.

“This was our forward operating base.” Kolivan set down his stack of blades on the large stone table in the center of the room, before gesturing towards the broken machinery that had been placed around this make-shift command center. “This was where we made our stand, and this is where we fell.” 

As the rest of the Paladins deposited the blades that they had been carrying on the table, Kolivan made his way to the window on the far side of the room, gazing out towards the scorched fields on the outskirts of town. 

The Paladins stared down at the stacks of swords on the table, seeing the devastation laid bare in front of them. 

Keith circled the table, pulling the glove off of his hand so that he could trace his fingers along the hilts of the weapons displayed before him. “All these blades… they… they _were_ someone. Someone important. Someone real.” Keith pointed to several blades on the table, each blade distinctively different from the ones beside them, each blade as unique as the operative that had wielded it. “Ilun. Berex. Keenwar. Xanten. Lio’su. I _knew_ these Blades.”

“And I trained these Blades.” Krolia appeared beside her son, letting her hand rest atop his.

“And I failed these Blades.” Kolivan sighed, rubbing a hand across his scarred brow. 

Allura was the first one to pull her eyes away from the table of lifeless knives, turning to Kolivan to ask, “How did this happen?”

Kolivan stood with his back to the room, his eyes cast upon something beyond the threshold of this command center. “Our base was attacked. They had jammed our communications so that we couldn’t call for help.”

“And by ‘they’... do you mean…?” Hunk spoke, turning towards Kolivan.

“Sendak’s _Fire of Purification._ ” A low growl rumbled out of the Blades’ leader before he continued, “They besieged our base. Attacking without warning. It wasn’t warfare, it was a slaughter.” 

“How many Blades made it out of the base?” Keith asked, closing his eyes and bracing himself for an answer that he was sure would bring with it only pain.

“Not enough.” Kolivan took a few deep breaths, preparing himself to share what he had already known. He had already relived these memories during the months of captivity at the hands of the druid, but no matter how many times he attempted to face the events that had transpired, the gravity of his failures would always seem to shatter him. “What few survivors remained rallied here. The people of this world offered us a safe haven, and when the druids arrived, they insisted on fighting beside us. Together, we managed to destroy their cruiser, and even kill two of the druids… but it simply wasn’t enough.”

The Paladins cast their gazes downwards, recalling how so many worlds had been content on allowing Voltron to fight their battles for them. Yet the people of this planet would not remain passive: they would not stand idly by while the Blades fought and died for the good of the universe. The Paladins lamented the fact that they had been unable to meet the brave occupants of this world. 

“They targeted the non-combatants. They broke through our ranks, rounding up the citizens and dragging them out into the city square.” Kolivan traced his claw along the windowsill, letting his pointed digits scrape the edge as stared off into the distance. “Macidus, he… he told us he would let them live if we laid down our arms. So we surrendered. We had enough blood on our hands, and we didn’t want the destruction of their entire civilization to come at the cost of our willingness to continue fighting a losing battle. But Macidus… he…”

Kolivan slammed his fist against the stone barrier separating them from the outside world. “... he _lied_. We should have known… or perhaps we did know and had simply hoped that there was some semblance of mercy residing in that black heart of his.” He sighed, contemplating the actions that could have spurred different outcomes: there were none. “But we didn’t have any other choice.”

The broken promises and false pretenses of the Empire’s ‘deals’ were all too familiar to the Paladins. Yet Romelle stifled a gasp by covering her mouth with her hands, still a relative newcomer to the viciousness that this war entailed. 

“They killed the civilians first… They made us watch. They wanted us to see the cost of our rebellion so that we would understand the full extent of our failure. It was only when the cries of the children would fade from our ears to inhabit our souls would Macidus start upon our fellow Blades.”

Keith and Krolia’s eyes were still locked upon the numerous blades littering the stone table before them. Only able to fathom the destruction that was suffered by placing the faces to the weapons on the table. 

“They started with our youngest.” Kolivan continued, “Forcing our more senior members to bear witness to suffering that we had caused our younger generations. They took from us our brightest, our hopeful… our _future.._. Until all that remained were the disillusioned, the broken, and the damned.” A heavy pause punctuated his words, “Antok and I were the last.”

Kolivan swallowed the lump in his throat, steeling himself to reopen fresh wounds, “We were imprisoned with one another. A kindness at first, until Macidus started to drain Antok of his quintessence. He took from him… _time_.” Kolivan’s ears flattened as a single tear dampened the fur around his unscarred eye, an emotion invisible to all the humans and Alteans present. “He stole time off of Antok’s life. Taking movements at time until one day… he came to collect, and Antok simply had nothing left to give.” 

Kolivan sucked in a breath, the quake in his breathing barely noticeable as he attempted to maintain a fragment of his usual collectedness. “This planet is a graveyard.”

“If that’s the case, then… wouldn’t there be…?” Hunk stopped himself, unable to utter the final word of his question, unprepared to face what would surely be another devastating revelation. 

Kolivan pointed out of the window, the tremor in his hand only now visible as he directed the Paladin’s attention to what it was he had been fixated on as he had recounted the events that occurred. There, in the middle of the scorched earth of what was once a battleground, were dozens of black-suited bodies haphazardly stacked atop each other. They were displayed as a monument to the druid’s conquest over the Blade of Marmora- the city itself a mausoleum to house the dead and the defeated. 

A loud _‘CLANG’_ pulled everyone’s attention back towards Keith, the Red Paladin having dropped his own blade on the table amongst his brother’s and sister’s as he made his way over to the window with Kolivan. Keith leaned himself against the wall, steadying himself as his own legs threatened to fail him as the weight of these losses leaned heavy upon his soul. Keith had hoped against reason that he would have arrived to Kar’Dam to find his family... he had believed that the universe owed him some silent form of compensation for having already taken so much from him, and now- that small ember of hope that had warmed his heart deadened what little optimism he was clinging to. Keith stared at the mass of frozen limbs of his unmoving comrades, nearly unable to comprehend the hatred that must have been harbored by the Empire to treat his fellow Blades like animals led to the slaughter.

“ _Hey…_ ” A soft voice called out to him, Shiro having collected Keith’s knife off of the table and presenting it back to him: a reminder to Keith that he is not dead… no matter how much pain he was in, he was still _alive_. 

Keith turned to look at Shiro, before taking his blade and falling against the man, wrapping his arms tightly around the Black Paladin. He buried his face against Shiro’s breastplate, ignoring the cool sting of the chilled metal and focusing on the solid presence enveloping his own broken spirit.

Shiro wrapped his arm tight around Keith, cradling the boy’s heart in his embrace as if nursing the broken wing of an injured bird in his hand. He whispered into Keith’s hair, murmuring words that would not travel beyond the privacy of the moment they shared, _“I’m so sorry, Keith.”_

A cold wind howled through the derelict city, the very air still carrying with it the screams of those who had suffered the barbarism of the Komar. The dead let their presence be known as a hollow silence permeated the air around the Paladins.

It was Lance who broke that silence.

“Kolivan, I’m sorry.” The Blue Paladin pushed past the others to stand next to the Blade Leader at the window. Lance stared at the pile of dead Blades, forcing himself to engrain the image of the fallen into the darkest recesses of his memory. “The Blade of Marmora has always stood beside us: you were always there for us when we needed you… and when the time came, when _you_ needed _us…_ we weren’t there.”

Kolivan offered the boy an empty smile, “I appreciate the sentiment, Paladin… but Voltron is not to blame for our defeat. It was my choices and my own actions that led us here. The blame rests solely with me.” His eyes scoured the pile of bodies, knowing that he should be among the dead, with his family. And yet, fate had cursed him to live, so that he could see the ruination of the very order he had doomed. “I’m a disappointment. Unfit to even don this uniform.”

“No.” Lance placed his small, human hand atop Kolivan’s massive claw. Kolivan flinched, nearly recoiling at the sudden touch, but the human was steadfast; Lance held on to what he could, stopping the tremors in Kolivan’s hand and sharing with him the warmth of his grasp. “Listen, man- all my life I thought that I was a disappointment: never the first to do anything, Veronica made Lieutenant at like- _nineteen_ , and I couldn’t even make it as a Fighter-Class Pilot.” Lance rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand, grasping for the words, “I was just never _good_ _enough_. I always felt outclassed as a pilot and that just left me feeling bitter towards the people that were simply better than me.” He cast a quick, apologetic glance towards Keith, to which Keith nodded in response, “Because of that… I began to doubt myself… my _worth…_ my _place_ in this team... But I was wrong, and it took someone else to tell me that I was wrong.” Lance squeezed Kolivan’s hand, trying to summon his attention, “You are not to blame here, okay? You are a _great_ leader, Kolivan. You led these men as best you could, and that’s all that they would ever ask of you. You are _not_ a disappointment to them, and you are _not_ a disappointment to yourself.”

Kolivan pulled his eyes away from the bodies of those past saving, and turned his gaze to the small human that was in some way- trying to save him. His eyes skittered first across the hand resting on his own -the boy’s petite appendage seeming like that of a child’s in comparison- and then up to his cobalt colored eyes. The Paladin did not waver or flinch when he met Kolivan’s stare, instead- he smiled. 

“Thank you, Lance.” While words were of little consolation, the Paladin’s assured belief in Kolivan’s leadership and dedication did much to ease the suffering of his own weary heart. 

“Kolivan,” Keith cleared his throat, and found the strength to pull himself out of the safety of Shiro’s embrace. He pointed towards the bodies piled up along the horizon, “Is Vrek…?”

“No. Vrek is not among the bodies here.” Kolivan spared Keith from having to speak the words, yet his answer gave Keith a flicker of hope that he had not intended, and Kolivan felt monstrous for having to dash the boy’s hopes so suddenly. “But Vrek is dead.”

That flicker of hope in Keith’s eyes died when his leader had confirmed that which he had already known to be fact. Kolivan knew what the boy was going through: the loss of a bond mate was not something to be taken lightly. The fact that the Red Paladin was still _alive_ was a testament to his own strength, as it was unfortunately common for such close bond mates to willingly follow their mate to an early grave. Kolivan knew that Keith must have at least contemplated using his own hands to join his mate in death; Kolivan knew because he too had flirted with those same thoughts after Antok had passed. 

Kolivan let go of Lance’s hand, moving purposefully to one of the pieces of equipment lined up against the wall. He removed a false panel from the side of the machine, and reached in to remove what had been so carefully hidden from the druids. “Ulaz recovered these, and they were meant to be returned to you.” Kolivan presented Keith with a long object wrapped in purple fabric, and Keith reached out hesitantly, letting his leader place the item in his waiting hands. 

Keith summoned what nerve he could to look at what Kolivan had given him. He didn’t need to guess what it was: the weight of his mate’s luxite blade was unmistakable. Curious eyes inspected the fabric that was wrapped around the blade; the soft texture of the coverings filled Keith with a frighteningly familiar sense of nostalgia. It was only under closer inspection did Keith find that the purple fabric was not purple at all, but that the once red material had been stained purple with...

_… with blood. Galran blood._

This was _his_ jacket. Left in his mate’s care back on the Blades base. And if this was his jacket, it didn’t take much imagination to guess whose blood had soiled it. 

He peeled back the fabric to affirm his suspicions. 

Keith’s eyes flittered across the cold metal of Vrek’s machete-like blade, the weapon no longer illuminated by the sparks of purple that once threaded it’s way throughout the hilt that had given the weapon its characteristic glow. Instead, the hilt of the machete had been embellished by the braided cords of silver, purple, red, and black tied off around the crossguard. Memories of happiness and serenity flooded back into Keith’s mind, as he recalled the joy it gave him to see his mate’s bond bracelet adorn his wrist to validate the love they shared in the eyes of all Galra. But those memories were smothered beneath the present moment, suffocated by the world in which Keith was now forced to live in without his mate. Now, seeing his mate’s bond bracelet only brought with it the same feelings of pain and emptiness that he had felt while in the Quantum Abyss. 

He couldn’t look away, holding the physical reminder of what was once his partner’s life and convictions incarnate, Vrek’s death was no longer in question… it was a certainty. 

_He’s really gone._ The walls of reality his reality started to collapse, as the thread of which held his dangling sanity was cut. He fell. He fell down towards the ocean of sadness of which would certainly drown him. He tried to look away, unable to stand the sight of the dead metal that gave way to the actuality of his dead mate, but also unable to tear his eyes away from the only reminders he had of his bond mate.

Keith walked away from the group and leaned back against the furthest wall he could find -away from Kolivan, away from his mother, away from the other Paladins- and slid down to the floor. The final thoughts of his mate lapped against his consciousness, the ripples of his dying words trying to save Keith from the depths of his own depression. 

_… Be strong…_

_I should have been there with you._

_… Be brave…_

_I could have protected you._

_… Be brave, Keith. I love you._

_I wasn’t ready to lose you. I should have died fighting beside you._

Shiro sat down next to Keith, offering his hand out to Keith: a lifeline in this ocean of sadness. 

Keith let go of Vrek’s blade, instead taking hold of Shiro’s hand and squeezing tight. He was fractured, cracking beneath his anguish, his psyche a plane of glass and his grief the spider-web-like shatter pattern that would destroy him if he let it. Keith bottled up his pain, storing it, saving it for another time. He wouldn’t let the others see him like this. 

Kolivan returned his attention to the bodies of the fallen Blades. “I can’t leave them like this.”

“And you won’t.” Krolia strode over to Kolivan’s side, reassuring one of her oldest friends, “They deserve better, and we won’t leave them like this.”

“We’ll help in whatever way we can.” Shiro offered.

“No.” Krolia rejected Shiro’s proposal, “This is something that the three of us must do ourselves.”

Shiro looked back down at Keith, who only nodded in support of his mother’s statements. The sentiment was clear: the Blades would take care of their own. “Okay, then.” Shiro squeezed Keith’s hand, reminding him that he would still be here for him, “Take whatever time you need.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Pidge stepped forward, letting her opinion be known. “Coming here was a _detour_. We still have places to be!”

Hunk tried to pull Pidge back, “Pidge, come on… they just lost-”

“Listen, I’m sorry about what happened here.” Pidge shook herself free of Hunk’s grasp, “But we have to make it back to Earth. Everyone thinks Voltron is gone and that we’re dead!”

“Pidge!” Shiro left Keith’s side, standing to his full height to tower over the dissenter. “That’s enough!”

“No, damnit, that’s not enough!” The Green Paladin stood her ground, glaring up at Shiro. “The Garrison is _waiting_ for us. My _DAD_ is _waiting_ for us! We can’t _waste_ any more time here!”

“Pidge…?” Keith’s voice did not grate against her ears with his typical intensity, instead, it escaped him like the final whimper of a dying animal, straining to be heard so that it would not suffer alone. 

The arguing stopped, and the Paladins all turned to face Keith, straining themselves to hear what would be spoken at a whisper. 

“I know you miss your family, but please…” Their eyes met, and Pidge could see the struggle of barely restrained tears being kept at bay by Keith’s own dwindling resolve, “... _please…_ let me bury mine.” 

Pidge could find no words of protest, nothing that she could say would excuse her tantrum. She couldn’t deny Keith this. She knew that. She had chased her own brother and father up into the stars and would have gladly scorned both Voltron and the universe in order to be reunited with her own family, and as such, she wouldn’t face the hypocrisy of debating Keith’s selfishness here and now. Keith was willing to dig the graves for his fallen brethren, it was a burden that Pidge could barely fathom, and so- she pushed her point no further. 

“ _Okay…_ ”

Keith nodded at Pidge, but she was unable to meet his eyes, shamed by the scene she had caused and the cruelty of her own impatience. 

“Lance…?” Keith turned to the Blue Paladin, “Do you mind if I borrow Red?”

“Go for it.” Lance offered Keith a smile, feeling the rumbling of the Red Lion vibrate through his chest. “He’d want to be here for you too, Keith.”

Keith nodded, a fairly false smile cracking the mask of sadness that he wore. Red was reliable: he was always there for him when he needed him, never abandoning him, and always willing to catch him if he fell. Having Red, Shiro, Kosmo, and Krolia all here for him through his grief was helpful, but their presence still felt microscopic when compared to the gaping hole that had been left in his life… but it was a start. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


The red lion accompanied the three Blades into the valley below, using the vast field of the once-battleground as the gravesite for which to lay these souls to rest. Using its giant, metallic claw, the Red Lion tore into the frozen surface of Kar’Dam, digging the trench that would be used to bury the dead. 

Keith, Kolivan, and Krolia marched their way over to the pile of bodies that Macidus had left in his destructive wake.

The hideous mass of figures that laid crumpled beneath themselves was difficult to look at, each black-suited body nearly indistinguishable from the others stacked atop it. The trio stared down at what was the closest body, it’s facemask exposed to the frigid air of the planet’s eternal winter. Krolia knelt down to the body, gazing into the lightless lenses of the Blades’ identity concealing armor.

“This is not who you were,” Krolia whispered. “You were _not_ a faceless soldier.” Krolia reached down to the Blade, reaching into their hood to press at the button behind their ear to deactivate their mask. “You were someone. You deserve to be known, and you deserve to be mourned.”

There was a brief shimmer of light before the Blades’ facemask dissolved like the fading ripples in a pond. The cold had preserved their body almost perfectly, the lifeless husk looking like he could have died mere hours ago… and not been subject to the elements of this abandoned world for over a year. 

They all recognized the Blade.

It was Keenwar. 

With a heavy sigh, Krolia set her hand upon the cheek of the medic. His face was cold, and it sapped the heat from her hand as if desperately clawing back for the warmth of life once more. Krolia winced, but did not move her hand. She would not deny her brother this final comfort. 

Keenwar was a Yllian hybrid, a species whose purpose had been guided by _healing_ the sick and injured, whose planet had declared themselves neutral within the early days of the war by offering medical services to both Galra and Rebel forces indiscriminately. That neutrality had not lasted. Zarkon destroyed the Yllian homeworld in a declaration to the universe that neutrality was not an option: you either stood with the Galra Empire, or you would be crushed beneath its boot. 

Krolia offered the last of Yllian’s what solace she could, “Go with peace into the arms of the Goddess Ylaria. Journey to the land where the sick never suffer, the hungry never starve, and the tired can finally rest easy. Rest now, for you have given much.” Krolia closed Keenwar’s eyes with the palm of her hand, so that he might finally sleep. _“Thank you.”_ She rose, turning back to Kolivan and Keith. 

Kolivan was trembling, his fists clenched either in anger or in anguish as he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the bodies before him.

“Kolivan,” Krolia tilted her head down, forcing herself between Keenwar’s body and Kolivan’s stare so that he might look her in the eyes. “Keith and I can handle this. Why not carve an inscription into the wall there? It would serve as a welcome reminder.” Krolia pointed to the ridge adjacent to the mass grave that the Red Lion had excavated, the sheetrock the perfect surface for what would be a memorial to the fallen. 

Kolivan followed her pointing finger over to the edge of the valley, intentionally drawing his eyes away from the mountain of bodies before them. “Of course,” he whispered, before unsheathing his blade and silently trudging back towards the edge of the settlement. 

Once Kolivan had left earshot, Krolia stood back up. “Kolivan has always… _cared_ too much. He’s never done well with death. It’s why he initially refused the position of leader.” 

“He’d always yell at me for disobeying orders…” Keith turned back to his mother, his understanding of the Blades’ leader deepening upon reflection. “He never wanted to put us in danger.”

“Not unless he could help it. That’s why I elected him.” 

“ _You_ elected him?” Keith’s eyes widened in shock, “You mean that you were once-?”

“Yes. A lifetime ago. I once briefly led the Blades. We made progress, successful strikes, but…” She closed her eyes in solemn contemplation. “But the cost was too high. That is why the Blades _needed_ Kolivan. He told me that he couldn’t bear the crutch of leadership… that he couldn’t sacrifice the lives of those he loved for whatever small gains we might claim in any given battle.”

“So what made him accept?”

“Antok.” She pulled Keith’s wrist up to draw attention to his bond bracelet, drawing her thumb across the colorful strands. Keith almost yanked his wrist away, but he didn’t. Krolia continued, “He told Kolivan that he trusted him not to put anyone’s life in danger needlessly. He said that no one else would understand the value of our lives better than Kolivan, and because of that… there is no better person to entrust the future of our order to.” 

“I thought he always said that _the mission_ was always most important…” Keith slowly pulled his hand out of Krolia’s grasp, covering his bond bracelet with his opposite hand.

“ _The mission_ , to him, was to keep everyone alive, and that was always what was most important.”

With that, the two turned back to the pile of bodies that lay stacked before them, casting one last look over their shoulders to Kolivan before they would start to untangle the Blades’ bodies from one another. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


It took hours for Keith and Krolia to separate the corpses, carrying the dead from the monument that Macidus had left over to the trench that the Red Lion had dug into the ground, all whilst Kolivan continued to chisel words into the side of the valley wall. 

Keith and Krolia were meticulous in their work, laying the bodies of the Blades carefully down into the shallow grave. They had tried to organize the bodies until they could resemble something almost peaceful: closing their eyes, interlacing their fingers, and resting their hands atop their chests. After each body had been carefully positioned, Krolia would take a moment to herself, resting the back of her hand against the Blades’ forehead and whispering some sort of prayer.

There seemed to be as many different prayers as there were different Blades. 

Keith himself didn’t believe in any sort of afterlife: his life had already been filled with broken promises and empty oaths to the point where the hollow platitudes of those offering eternal salvation would seem like jesters entertaining an empty court. The speculative talk of life after death was a notion that Keith would have all but scoffed at, and yet… 

… he had _seen_ Vrek, hadn’t he?

He placed his hand over the gaping wound that was his heart, and felt the weight of emptiness that Vrek had left in every fiber of his being. He took a moment to himself, reaching down to the jacket that was still wrapped firmly around his mate’s blade. His hand moved to one end of the covered weapon to clutch the hilt of Vrek’s blade, as if to remind himself that it was still there, buried beneath the fabric. Keith’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his fist tight around the handle of the machete-like hunk of luxite, forcing himself to accept the truth. _No. Vrek is gone._

Keith looked back to Krolia as she uttered the final words of comfort to another one of the fallen. Words were all that could be offered to help ease the suffering of the dead, and if these prayers would help lay his family to rest, then Keith would gladly offer prayers of his own to help see that his brothers and sisters of the Blade would sleep soundly. 

Krolia offered another prayer, repeating a verse of which Keith would recognize only to be spoken to those of pure Galran lineage. “While your blood has been spilled on the sands of a distant world, may you now be returned to the dunes of Daibazaal from whence we came. You protected the ones that you loved, you battled those that would do them harm, and you have brought honor to your family name. May your ancestors be proud of the life you have lived. _Vrepit Sa._ Rest well, Xanten.” 

Keith committed his mother’s words to memory.

What Keith had known of Xanten -apart from his swordsmanship skills- was his undying commitment to uphold his word: if Xanten had said he would do something, he would- and if he had said he wouldn’t do something, he wouldn’t. Ilun had once offhandedly mentioned that there was no better person to confide in than Xanten, he took his honor seriously, and any words you shared with him would be taken to his grave. While Keith had known Xanten peripherally at best, he could vividly recall the tall and deceptively fluffy Galra in the base’s common room, shouting and jeering as he and a few others huddled around what Vrek had described as a ‘children’s game’, akin to that of a human board game. At the time, Keith had wondered if Xanten would have been a _Monopoly_ guy or a _Chutes and Ladders_ kind of guy. 

_I wish I had known you better_.

The two continued their work, with Krolia pausing after every Blade to give them a brief eulogy from their own respective heritage. Markers were placed by way of the luxite blades that had been left behind- each Blade’s knife being stabbed into the dirt to act as a headstone for its deceased master. 

“May your name be written in the stars, your actions etched in the skies, and your memory recorded within the great library of The Didactic. We go forth now, enlightened by what you have imparted unto us. We live, we learn, we pass on… We are grateful, Ilun.” Krolia said her peace, but did not close Ilun’s eyes, and instead left the Blades’ body staring up into the night sky- forever contemplating the infinite. 

Some of Keith’s last memories of Ilun were of her abandoning him and Vrek on Feyiv, and that was not fair to her. She had been one of the first Blades to introduce themselves to Keith after having finished his trials, taking an active interest in Keith’s unfamiliarity with Galran history and offering herself as a repository of information for him to draw upon. Ilun had always been one of the most well-read Blades on base, and yet... _She had terrible taste in television_ , Keith mused, recalling the hours upon hours of terrible romantic soap-operas that she would subject herself to- teary-eyed and wholly invested in the melodrama that unfolded in what had to be the universe’s lowest form of entertainment. She had always been there with… _with Regris_ … acting as a chaperone to the immature and insatiable lizard. After the Kral Zera, Ilun had tried her best to avoid Keith, with every passing interaction being intensely awkward, as Ilun was unable to look him in the eye. She was ashamed of her actions, regretful of her cowardice, and Keith had never offered her his forgiveness. 

_I was never mad at you, Ilun._

“Your voice now joins with the choir of the ancients, so that your song may be heard throughout the infinite. Goodbye, Schippa.” 

The memories that separated Keith’s life as he had known it -after his first heat had ended- and his new life as Vrek’s bond mate, were bookmarked by long, insufferable hours working as Schippa’s assistant in engineering. The Blade had been determined to distract Keith from his emotional distress by refusing to even acknowledge Vrek’s existence- effectively shutting down any opportunity Keith had to talk about his current predicament. It had been beyond frustrating, especially since Schippa seemed to enjoy every single one of Keith’s exasperated huffs. She had irritated him, and that was her intention… but amidst all that annoyance, she had made him laugh at a time when Keith had needed it most. He had never gone back to see Schippa after he had bonded with Vrek. He regretted that now.

_I’ll miss you, Schippa. Thanks for the laughs._

“Swim through the forests of Candaskah, Lastor. Dance in everlasting revelry with all those you have known and loved. Let the suffering be washed away in the night rains- for the morning light now shines upon you.”

Lastor had always seemed to be the subject of Antok’s ire: falling short in all forms of espionage training and constantly shirking from his responsibilities around the base in order to find some way to watch reality tv. Lastor always seemed to be pulling extra-shifts and punitive duties, consistently being dealt the proverbial short end of the stick for every job around base. Yet, in spite of all of that- Keith had always known Lastor to have a smile stretched across his face, as if perpetually happy to see all those that greeted him. Staring at the cold body before him -expression blank and vacant- Keith almost didn’t recognize Lastor without that smile tugging at the edges of his lips. It was a smile that had made you want to smile in return. 

_You were a good man, Lastor. And you deserved better._

Keith listened to his mother’s words with growing interest, seeing in these eulogies not only a cultured understanding of a multitude of civilizations, but realizing that Krolia _knew_ these Blades better than he ever did. Embittered by his own grief, it had been easy to forget that Krolia had been a Blade longer than he had been alive, and the dawning revelation that these losses had hit her harder than she would let on would compel Keith to offer more leniency to the stranger he had been keeping at arm’s length. For whatever failings she had as his mother, Krolia had been a _good_ Blade. 

Eventually, the bodies of all the Blades present were placed within their new resting place- leaving only two vacancies in the center of the mass grave: one for Antok, and one for Vrek.

Vrek’s body had already been lost, but Kolivan insisted that a place be left for the medic so that, body or not, he might be able to find peace alongside his brothers and sisters of the Blade. Keith appreciated the sentiment… he wouldn’t want Vrek to be alone. 

Kolivan retrieved Antok’s body with Kosmo, venturing briefly to the caverns below to fetch the remains of his bond mate. He laid Antok down in the grave, and Keith and Krolia both gave their leader a modicum of privacy, standing beside the Red Lion as their leader shared his own farewell with his lover. 

As Kolivan said his final goodbyes to Antok, Keith studied the inscription that Kolivan had chiseled into the wall across from them.

Lining the cliff face were words of every language, starting with what Keith would recognize as Galran, and continuing on in languages that the translation program in his helmet had no reference for. There were over 2 dozen languages that Kolilvan had transcribed, as many as he could recount for every hybrid that had graced the ranks of the Blade of Marmora. Keith stared at the lines of shapes, circles, and scribblings of what looked like wholly alien alphabets, before his eyes finally wandered down to the final line that Kolivan had written… in English… for his own benefit:

**Here lies eighty-six brave souls who would not stand for tyranny, and who fell believing in a peace that they would not live to see. They represent the strongest and bravest that the universe has to offer, and the stars will not shine as brightly without them.**

Kolivan walked back over to the group, joining them at the foot of the Red Lion. When the three were reunited, Keith picked Vrek’s blade up off the ground from where he had left it- the blade still shrouded by Keith’s bloodied jacket. He presented the bundled weapon to Kolivan, deliberately holding eye contact with their leader so that he would not be faced with the sight of his mate’s blade. “Do we put these with the others? So that people remember them?”

“We do not.” Kolivan unsheathed Antok’s blade from its place on his hip, holding his mate’s blade in upturned palms identical to the way Keith had presented him with Vrek’s. “As their bond mates, we carry with us the weapon that was once theirs. So that our spirits are never separated, and so that they can continue to protect us… even in death.” 

Kolivan returned Antok’s blade to its scabbard, prompting Keith to lower Vrek’s blade. In some ways, he was relieved: this blade was one of the few mementos he had left of Vrek, and he didn’t want to part with it. Yet… he couldn’t bring himself to look at the blade, as the lifeless shard of luxite served as a cruel reminder that his mate was truly gone. 

The three remaining Blades took a minute to process the sight before them, looking at the mass grave of their brothers and sisters and feeling as if they were staring into the event horizon itself.

“Our order may have been dealt a critical blow, but judging by both those that are here…” Krolia’s eyes scanned the tombstones before her, “... and those that are not… there must still be others out there.”

Keith nodded in agreement, he hadn’t seen Ulaz or Regris, and yet- he found himself unable to ask about the fate that befell them, fearful that his heart wouldn’t be able to handle the response he would receive.

“I sent a team to collect the stragglers… agents who required assistance in their extractions… distress beacons that had been activated. The team was headed by Ulaz.” 

Surprisingly, it was Krolia who hesitantly asked, “Is… Regris… with them?”

Kolivan turned back to Krolia, straightening his back, “Yes. Regris was with Ulaz and Danit as a part of the retrieval team.”

Keith breathed a heavy sigh of relief, letting loose a breath he had not known to be holding. _Regris. He’s okay_. That small amount of good news somehow felt like a victory, easing the sharp pain in Keith’s chest and allowing him to breathe deep once more. 

“It has... been some time since I last heard from them.” Kolivan’s eyes fell once more to the bodies before them, hoping that they did not suffer the same fate as those here. “It is possible that-”

“No.” Krolia stopped him from continuing that chain of thought. “They’re alive, and they’re out there.”

“Yes. I’m sure you’re right.” Kolivan offered her a weak smile, but that smile faded from his face as quickly as it had appeared when he turned back to face what had become of the rest of their ranks. “It’s time.” 

Keith nodded solemnly, taking a few slow steps past Krolia and over to the Red Lion. Keith spread his palm out against the cold metal of the Lion’s leg, before resting his forehead against the red paneling of the ancient war machine. 

There was a soft rumble in the back of Keith’s mind: a purr that he would recognize as belonging to the Red Lion. Despite his connection to the Black Lion, Red would always have a lingering presence in the Paladin’s consciousness- forever bonded by having faced oblivion together. Keith leaned in close, whispering to the machine, “One last favor, bud. For old time’s sake.”

Keith stepped back from the Lion, and Red reared itself back before unleashing a giant column of liquid flame upon the bodies of the dead Blades, dousing the grave in an all-consuming inferno.

The last three Blades on the planet stared at the funeral pyre of their comrades.

“I told Macidus that he did not defeat us but... We are but a handful of survivors.” Kolivan held his hands up in front of himself, searching in vain to see the blood that was surely there. “We have nothing left…” 

“That’s not true.” Keith gripped Kolivan’s forearm, drawing the man’s attention back towards him. “We have what the Blades have always had.” The human half-breed cast his mother a knowing look, and she returned his gesture with her own form of agreement.

  
  
  


“We have _tomorrow_.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


The Paladins sat perched atop the ridge, looking down from the former commander center towards the fire that burned in the valley below. An awkward quiet brewed between the Paladins as they were kept company by the embers of the departed. 

Through the bond that they shared within the Black Lion, Shiro would be able to feel the hurt echoing through Keith's soul.

“Does anyone want to say a few words?” Shiro posed the question to the group. 

Upon being met with the averted eyes and sealed lips, he took it upon himself to speak first. “When I was captured, I had thought to myself: this is it. I’m going to die at the hands of the Galra and never see Earth again.”

Faces fell as the group thought about how different this war would have been if Shiro had not first appeared, and had instead died in the gladiatorial arena like so many other Galran prisoners. 

“But I didn’t die.” Shiro continued, “Ulaz set me free, and gave me a fighting chance.” The Black Paladin chuckled, his flesh hand reaching up to touch what remained of his amputated metal arm, “It’s strange. I fought _so many_ other species in that area, all of them intent on killing me and none of them showing an ounce of mercy. The first one to show me any kindness out in the cold depths of space… was Ulaz: a Galra. I suppose I never got to thank him for that.”

More silence, until the courage would be found for the group’s newest Altean to find her voice.

“I didn’t know about the Blade of Marmora.” Romelle pulled her eyes off of the floor, forcing herself to look at all the Blades that burned in the pyre. “I had just assumed that all Galra were _evil_ , bloodthirsty monsters hell-bent on the destruction of our people. I was… _afraid…_ when I met Krolia… I guess, I just couldn’t fathom why a Galra would turn against their Empire, not when they had everything.” The Altean fiddled with the bow tied around the front of her tunic, “Why would people with nothing to gain and everything to lose commit themselves to such a desperate cause?” 

“Because it was the right thing to do.” Hunk said. “Back when, um… when I was being _‘beaten smart’_ by Dayak… you know? Lotor’s mean Nanny? At Galra High Command? I learned a few things about the Galra… one of the things she said was a proverb, and it went something like…” The Yellow Paladin cleared his throat, recalling the Governess’ words, _“May we be resolute in our honor, for it is a burden we must bear. Yet may we find absolution in those we love, so we are not forced to bear this burden alone.”_ Hunk sighed, “Or… or something like that…”

“Waking up ten thousands decaphoebs in the future to find that my father… our _planet…_ had been lost… that had been difficult.” Allura spoke up, tears edging their way up into her eyes, “But in spite of that, I was gifted with a new family: you. And I came to love each and every one of you. And yet- when I found out that Keith was part Galra… I couldn’t look at him and not see everything that I hated.”

“Allura,” Lance was already at her side, ready to support her, “Keith doesn’t hold that against you...”

“I know, but…” Allura chewed on her lower lip, “But when he returned to the Castle of Lions after having missed our show of arms, I told him that the Marmora could go on without him, as they had for thousands of years. I had foolishly thought that _we_ were the family that he needed, when really- it was _them_. He had needed them more than he had needed us, and I was just too stubborn to see that.”

“We all underestimated how much the Blades meant to him.” Pidge added, rather dourly, “They… were his _family_.”

Allura stepped forward, “Allow me to make amends.” The Princess clasped her hands together, closing her eyes as she offered, “Today we honor nobility beyond comprehension, for there is no nobler a cause than that of the pursuit of peace. Before us lay the bodies of those who sought to cast light where there was once only darkness, to stand in defense of those who could not stand for themselves, and to bring reason to an unreasonable existence. They represent the best of us, please welcome them into your great halls with open arms and warm hearts, for they have sacrificed much so that we may tread the path they have left for us.”

A gentle blue light emanated from Allura’s closed palms, shining for a single second before disappearing back into her hands. 

“Princess, you-?” Coran stood, mouth agape, as if unable to process what Allura had just said. 

Allura only nodded in response, before turning her back to the pyre before her, leaving the gathering of Paladins in order to seek a more hospitable shelter for the evening.

After Allura had left, Romelle spoke once more, this time, to Coran. “We had many Altean prayer books back in the colony… but… that was not a passage I was familiar with. What was it?”

“Well, pinch my nose and call me a Yalmor.” Eyes studied Coran as the Altean man twirled the end of his mustache between his fingers. “That prayer is one only known by and spoken by Altean nobles. It’s meant to mourn the passing of a King or Queen, only to be spoken amongst the closest family members of the Royal Family. Even I have only heard it spoken once before.”

The Paladins all looked between each other, before returning their gazes to the funeral before them.

“So… what do you think is going to happen to Keith now?” Hunk asked, looking noticeably distressed.

“What do you mean?” Pidge replied, shooting Hunk a questioning look alongside the other Paladins, as if searching for clarification in Hunk’s question.

“Well, I mean…” Hunk wrung his hands together, “Zarkon was married to Honerva, right? I’m assuming… because he was Galra… that made them bond mates? Well… when Honerva died, Zarkon went crazy and started destroying planets. He started the war that we’re _still_ fighting today. And now… Keith lost his bond mate… so… what do you think is going to happen to him?"

A long, uncomfortable silence punctuated Hunk’s words. 

“Nothing is going to happen to Keith.” Shiro looked first to Hunk, and then to each of the others still present in the room. “Because he has us.”

The Paladins all nodded back.

The group stayed for a few more minutes, watching the flames burn before Lance would say, “Come on, guys. We should give them some privacy.”

With that, the Paladins and the Alteans left the Blades to mourn in peace, following Allura to find warmer accommodations for the night. 

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Keith’s eyes focused on the flames dancing before him, studying the way the reds bled into orange and the way the orange faded into yellow, chasing the embers up into the tranquil night sky. He took a few steps forward, his boots stopping at the edge of the pyre, before the empty grave that was meant for his lost love. 

The Red Paladin spared a look down at the bond bracelet adorning his wrist, tucking the small strands of braided material up under his gauntlet- hiding his aching heart and his Galran heritage from sight. Keith held up the bundle of fabric that contained Vrek’s blade, pulling back the collar of his stained jacket to look, _truly look,_ at all that he had to remember his mate. His eyes wandered down to his mate’s bond bracelet- the strands of fabric still speckled with what was surely Vrek’s blood. He untied the bracelet from the hilt of the weapon, clutching the bands of sentimental importance and holding it close to his heart before stashing it into the armored compartment on his waist for safe keeping. 

He stared down at the blade and the jacket in his hands, softly repeating what he had heard his mother say too often today, “While your blood has been spilled on the sands of a distant world, may you now be returned to the dunes of Daibazaal from whence we came.” Keith clenched his jaw, not allowing himself to waver before he finished what he had to say. “You protected the ones that you loved... you battled those that would do them harm... and you have brought honor to your family name. May your ancestors be proud of the life you have lived.” Keith considered that last line for a moment, adding, “ _I_ am proud of the life you have lived. _Vrepit Sa_.” The words tasted acidic in his mouth, but not entirely foreign. “Rest well, Vrek. I-” Tears welled in Keith’s eyes, as he threatened to break all over again. _“I love you.”_

The words seemed to echo in the void he felt trapped in, bouncing off the walls of his mind as his thoughts were drawn to the memories he had of Vrek’s face. Right now, so long ago, he was standing before his mate, his palm cradling Vrek’s cheek in his hands as his thumb traced the outline of his violet-colored lips. Keith could see him mouth the words, _“I love you”_ , and Keith responded by pressing his own lips against his mate’s. 

_Had I said it enough? Did I tell you as often as you needed to hear it?_ Keith tried to recall all the times he had declared his love for his mate, and while numerous, it still didn’t feel like _‘enough’_ to him. 

Keith pulled the bundled blade up against his chest, crossing his arms over the flat of the blade and holding what was left of Vrek up against his heart. 

He didn’t even realize he had started crying until his tears impacted against the inside of his helmet’s visor. 

Keith drew a deep breath, holding it for a moment, before taking another step forward. His helmet immediately sealed, the visor extending and acting as a mouth guard as Keith walked into the burning fire. Warning lights flashed within his helmet as Keith was bathed in flames. He ignored them. His armor would protect him before he would begin to feel the effects of the inferno. 

The fire crackled and popped as he walked into its embrace, cinders crushed beneath his heavy footfalls until he was standing amongst the dead, in the vacant spot that had been left for Vrek.

He fell to his knees, the weight of his heavy heart a force stronger than any gravity.

Keith pulled his arms away from his chest, watching as his jacket caught fire and burned away into nothingness, crumbling into ash and carried off in the breeze until Vrek’s blade was finally fully bared to him. His eyes roamed across the exanimate luxite: the once glowing Marmoran emblem now grey and empty in his grasp, the shimmering silver of the sharpened edge now seeming muted and dulled.

Keith tightened his grip around Vrek’s blade, letting the flames lick at the luxite to restore some semblance of the glow that it had once held.

He closed his eyes, and screamed. 

He howled, letting loose a noise that conveyed all the pain that had been trapped within the confining prison of his lungs. He screamed as long and as loud as he could, releasing the months worth of agony that he had been plagued with: damning the losses he had felt, and cursing those that had taken so much from him. He would be heard over the roaring fires that engulfed him, and his misery would be felt by all those that knew him. Keith screamed until his throat burned as surely as the world around him, he screamed until he was left light-headed from oxygen deprivation, he screamed until he could scream no longer.

When he finally reopened his eyes, he was confronted by a world on fire. His eyes once again focused on the flames dancing before him, seeing only beauty in the destructive power; the fire destroyed everything it touched, and it burned with an intensity that none could challenge. Feeling so empty, Keith would choose to reflect that intensity -that penchant for destruction- with what little remained of his broken heart. That fire would fill him, and it would fuel him for what was to come.

For so long, Keith had questioned his place within Voltron; every other Paladin seemed to embody some sort of precise motivation for the Legendary Defender, each their own shard of influence that would drive them into battle. 

Allura was the dying cry of an extinct people, a living reminder for what they would all face if they failed...

Hunk represented the purity of heart that was needed to unite all corners of the universe: bridging alliances and building relationships with the hopes of establishing a brighter future...

Pidge was all logic and intellect: she saw the fallacies of the current rule. Like so many other things in her life, she would be set upon the path of fixing what was so clearly broken...

And even Lance: his hesitance and self-doubt offered in turn both dedication and perseverance. He would look within himself and see unworthiness, but instead of falling to despair, he would strive to improve... 

The fire started to sting through his armor, and Keith let it hurt. The pain he felt offered him unequivocal clairvoyance, because now, Keith understood the role he had to play.

Keith would be the fiery wrath of righteousness that was needed to extract justice from those that had spread chaos across the stars. Keith would offer the people of this universe retribution against the Galra Empire, and they would finally have the peace that they deserved. 

“They’re going to pay for this, Vrek…” With renewed vigor and a newfound purpose, Keith looked down upon his mate’s blade, “I _promise_ that I’ll make them pay.”

Surrounded by the family he had failed to protect, Keith would be tempered by his anguish, forged by his fury, and baptized in the fires that raged on this dead world. In that moment, the Red Paladin would be reborn in vengeance.

The war that had been waged by the Galra Empire was dispassionate, indiscriminate, and unsympathetic. And the Blades had been but more casualties: foundations of bodies that cemented the Empire’s superiority over the rest of the universe. 

But now, Keith was in _pain_. 

And this _pain_ was personal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well now... what IS going to happen to Keith from here on out? He's emotional, he's volatile, and now- he's on the warpath. Do you think Hunk's worry is reasonable? Or do you think Shiro and the Paladins will be able to keep their grieving leader at bay?
> 
> And what did you all think of Macidus? Honestly, I've had his death planned in my head for a LONG TIME and I couldn't wait to get that down on paper. I also REALLY needed to give the Blades a proper send off- it's something that I wish the show had done and honestly, I hope that it gives some feeling of closure to people who -like myself- wish that the Blades had received better treatment. 
> 
> The dialogue in this Chapter was also quite challenging because I needed to somehow reflect a multitude of different beliefs to further illustrate how unique each Blade was. Did any one moment or goodbye hit you hardest? I knew this Chapter was always going to hit like a sledgehammer, but how did I do? Let me know in the comments!
> 
> As always, thank you SO MUCH for your continued support. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed this Chapter, as I absolutely poured my heart into writing it. 
> 
> Side note- HOLY SHIT over 14,000 words? No wonder it felt like I've been writing this Chapter for years. xD


	5. Victims of My Heartbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Voltron Paladins leave Kar'Dam, and continue their journey back to Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT:  
> Hey there, everyone! I'm going to experiment with something new this chapter. I'm adding musical scores to specific points in this story. Admittedly, this will work better on a desktop, but it is something that I hope will add to your reading experience.
> 
> Each cue will be RIGHT JUSTIFIED on the page:
> 
> A "[ >|| ]" will mean to play the designated track ONCE.
> 
> A "[ >>> ]" will mean to play the designated track ON LOOP.

Morning came, just as surely as it always would, with the radiant light of Kar’Dam’s red star cresting over the horizon to rouse the Paladins from their sleepless slumber. 

Keith hadn’t slept well: despite the reassuring presence offered by Shiro in their temporary bed, he had tossed and turned all night. 

Light filled the small room and bathed the contoured, alien furniture in an earthly early-morning glow. Keith tossed himself around in the satin sheets, surrounded by luxuries and yet still searching in vain to find comfort in them. He felt the light bleed through his closed eyes, a harsh reminder that he had -in spite of his own desires- lived to see another day. 

He turned away from the window, not yet ready to face the existence that had demanded his heart and sacrificed so many of his brothers and sisters to the whims of a psychopath. Thoughts of a long night and a raging inferno emerged, unbidden into Keith’s mind. The memories were still fresh, and he couldn’t help but feel that the nightmare that he had spared the fallen Blades’ from would somehow find new residency in his own subconscious. 

He tossed.

Life was cruel: a malignant suffering that was single-minded in its quest to stamp out the smallest kindlings of kindness, unwilling to foster thoughts of happiness and instead intent on rewarding the wicked.

He turned.

The light from the morning sun warmed his face, and Keith opened his eyes, staring out of the window and into the rising star with a burning vindictiveness. He would find his resolve. He would face today, and every day henceforth. He would live his life and he would _end_ this war... for Vrek, for Ilun, and for every Blade whose body now fertilized the soil of this forsaken world. The universe would not take anything else away from him, and if it tried...

_… you’ll have to go through me, first._

There was a time when Keith had fought for the future: he had fought with a feverish fervor for the life that he could have with Vrek… a life free from the suffocating grip of the Empire… a life filled with boundless amounts of love… a life, perhaps, with a family. But that time was gone, his hope stolen and his aspirations trampled upon. When Vrek had been killed, his murder had taken from them two lives. 

Now, Keith’s motivations laid in the past, shackled to the bodies of the family that he had buried on this planet. He would be driven by the desire to achieve the peace that the Blade of Marmora had fought, and died for. It was a peace that they had rightly deserved, and Keith would see that such peace would be achieved, regardless of the cost. 

Keith sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs with stagnant air. When he exhaled, he felt as if a small weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Keith…?” The softness of the words were spoken at a whisper, as Keith could feel Shiro’s concern for him blossom in his chest like a sunflower opening its petals for the rays of light.

“I’m awake.”

“You got back so late last night that we didn’t really have a chance to talk…” Shiro sat up in the bed and spread his palm over the soft skin of Keith’s naked back, “I’m worried about you.”

Keith closed his eyes once more, letting Shiro’s gentle caress lull him into a sense of restfulness. He focussed on the soothing presence of Shiro’s idle fingers, the digits cool and calming against Keith’s comparatively burning Galra body.

“I’m fine.”

He wasn’t. 

Shiro could _feel_ the anguish simmering beneath Keith’s composure; he could feel the sickness that was eating him up from the inside, growing in the cavernous remains of his heart like a cancer.

“Keith, I can’t begin to imagine what you must be feeling right now.” Shiro sighed, his eyes settling on Keith’s ink-black hair, his face still turned away and his expressions hidden from him. “I’ve lost loved ones before… friends, family, colleagues… but never anything like what you’re going through. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that- it’s _okay_ if you’re _not_ fine.”

Keith didn’t say anything, but he gave no indication that he wasn’t receptive to what Shiro was telling him. And so, Shiro continued.

“I know that you’re hurting, and… I wish I could take your grief from you, Keith. But I can’t. That’s not how it works. The best I can do is be here for you, for whatever you need. I’ll be by your side. I promise I’m not-”

“No!” Keith shot up out of bed with a startling haste, facing Shiro with eyes that ached with resentment. “Don’t say _‘promise’_. Just… just don’t. There’s been too many-” He hesitated, his eyes falling from Shiro’s shocked expression to dart around the empty air in front of him, searching the room for words he couldn’t quite form. “People have… they’ve _promised_ me before and they-” His vision started to blur as tears started to brim in his eyes and stream down his scarred cheek, “And they couldn’t _keep_ their promises. So _please_ , don’t say it.”

“Okay…” Shiro nodded at Keith. He reached out, cautiously, reminded of the panic that had coursed through Keith’s veins the last time that he had tried to touch his face. He hated that such a touch, his touch, could be tainted with the cruel connotations of what his dark shadow had inflicted upon him. So, he waited, palm open and ready- for Keith to close the distance himself.

Shiro had recognized all the telltale signs of Keith’s veiled trauma in every shudder and recoil, and he recognized these signs because he himself was still prone to similar triggers. His time in the gladiatorial arena had taken its toll on his mental stability- with certain noises, sounds, and flashes now carrying with them glimpses into a past filled with endless amounts of suffering. While these triggers would not disappear entirely, they would dissipate with time, and until Keith could bear his touch without flinching, Shiro would give him the time that he needed. 

After a moment’s pause, Keith leaned in against Shiro’s open palm, letting him caress his scarred cheek. 

Shiro’s thumb grazed the dark laceration stretched across Keith’s perfect face, stroking down the length of the scar tissue in a single, graceful motion, brushing away his tears. “I am _so sorry_ , Keith.” 

Keith met Shiro’s big, remorseful eyes with a small smile, catching the man’s hand in both of his own and placing a chaste kiss on the inside of his wrist. He nuzzled into Shiro’s hand further, finding solace in the protective grasp of the Black Paladin. 

“Do you remember the first night I stayed with you?” 

Caught off guard by the question, it takes Shiro a full second to recall the timid boy that had curled up against him and fallen asleep all those years ago. The dorms hadn’t yet been readied for new cadets, and Shiro had been remanded custody of the troublesome teenager following his provisional acceptance into the Galaxy Garrison. “I… remember you eating _four pounds_ worth of chocolate chip cookie dough before vomiting in the bathroom and passing out on the couch to _Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.”_

“Yeah, _that_ night.” Smiles pulled at both of their lips as they faded back into the memory of a much simpler time. “Do you know what I remember about that night?”

“Throwing up four pounds worth of cookie dough?” Shiro offered with a bemused chuckle. “I imagine that that’s pretty hard to forget…”

Keith laughed, it was soft and subdued, but it was laughter nonetheless. It was a sound that Shiro hadn’t heard in far too long, and he was happy to hear such a symphony of glee pierce what had been an oppressive veil of sadness. 

“ _Besides_ that.” Keith swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and leaned his back against Shiro’s broad chest. The bed was clearly not built for humans, and his legs dangled off the side of the frame, clearing a few inches off of the ground. “What _I remember,_ is you asking if there was anything that I _wanted_.”

“And you said cookie dough, like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. So we drove down to the commissary and got you cookie dough.” Shiro let his hand fall atop Keith’s shoulder, his arm casually draped across the front of his chest so he could pull the half-human snugly against him.

“To be honest,” Keith tilted his head back, resting his neck against the sharp divot in Shiro’s collarbone. “That was just the first thing that came to mind. I had spent _two years_ in foster care. Eight ‘homes’ in that time. A new bed every ninety days.” Keith scoffed, “They told me that like it was some kind of record.” The bitter humor disappeared from his face, to be replaced by a remorse that now seemed painfully characteristic of him. “It’s just that… no one had ever _asked me_ what I _wanted_ before. I guess I just needed to see if you’d do it.”

“You wanted to see if I’d say no?” Shiro’s heart sank, lead-filled and settling somewhere within the pit of his stomach; when he had offered to care for Keith, he had been told that the boy had been a ‘problem case’, something that was expected after having been orphaned by the death of a parent. Everyone had _assumed_ that his anger and rage could be attributed to that of an emotional teenager grappling with the complexity of their own emotions, but in all that time- no one had thought to _ask_ him how he was doing.

The system that had ‘cared’ for him had, by design, done the opposite; parading the boy from guardian to guardian, unburdened by the concerns that Keith himself possessed- it had done nothing but sequester Keith to his own emotional reclusion. All Keith had needed… all he had _wanted…_ was to feel like someone actually _cared_ about him. It had taken two years before he had wound up on Shiro’s couch, and those two years were two years too long for Keith to have felt the icy grip of apathy. 

The mood dampened significantly as the two were left again to contemplate the failings of what could have, at any point, saved Keith from his destructive path.

Shiro pressed a kiss against the back of Keith’s head, “You know, maybe I should have told you _‘no’_. I mean… what _responsible_ guardian would’ve allowed you to get yourself sick on cookie dough on day one?”

“A responsible one wouldn’t have. And that’s why I’m glad that I got you.” Keith snuggled back against the mass of muscles that enveloped him, basking in the feeling of being held once more.

_I_ _t had been too long._

“I’m sure that social services agent would have had some words with me if she had found out.”

“Fuck ‘em.” Keith said flatly, and the two resumed their laughter.

Once the two had settled in a comfortable quiet, their laughter all but fading into the howling winds and creaking floorboards, Keith posed Shiro an entirely different question. “Do you know what I want now? After we return to Earth… I want to leave and never look back. I want to set out into the stars and find a new life. No Galra... No humanity… No _war_... just…”

“Just you and me?” Shiro asked, his grip around Keith tightening as he held the Red Paladin firm in his grasp.

“I…” Keith chewed on his lip, “I… didn’t want to ask.”

“You don’t have to, Keith.” Keith turned in his lap to face him, and Shiro stared into the violet pools of loneliness that so seemingly yearned for anything but. “You’ve always been there for me, Keith. Let me be here for you.” 

“Thank you, Shiro…” He leaned in closer, resting his forehead against Shiro’s and allowing gravity to pull their lips together. 

***

Keith redressed in his paladin armor, dusting off the ash and cinders that lingered in the crevices of his ablative plating. He inspected the fit in the mirror affixed to the wall next to the door, drawing a finger across the deep gash in the chest plate from his battle with the nightmarish shade of Shiro. Before he could feel himself slip back into that nightmare, he shook the memories out of his head, casting them back to the deep recesses of his memory. 

_That was not Shiro._

He centered himself, grounding his thoughts in what was real and closing his eyes and so that he could count his breaths. _In for five seconds. Hold for three seconds. Release for five seconds._ He didn’t open his eyes until he could feel his heart rate slow down to something resembling normality.

Fully dressed and fully present, Keith turned his attention to the real Shiro: the Shiro that had cared for, and loved him with all his heart; the Shiro that was here for him. 

Shiro was still pulling on his bodysuit, struggling, in vain, not to let the loss of an arm impact his ability to dress himself. But Keith noticed the strained effort on Shiro’s face when he tried reaching for the zipper that ran up the length of his spine. 

“Here, let me.” Keith moved behind Shiro’s back, and Shiro relented with a small huff, allowing Keith to help him. He pinched the skin tight fabric with one hand, and used the other to pull the zipper from the small of Shiro’s back up to the base of his skull. Keith continued, picking pieces of armor off of the neatly packed pile that Shiro had left the night before, helping him fasten together the dense pieces of lightweight metal until Shiro once again resembled the iconic silhouette of the Black Paladin.

When Shiro turned back to face Keith, the pair smiled at one another. “We should get going,” Shiro started, “The others are probably already up, and we don’t want to get too late of a start.”

“Yeah, I-” Keith’s eyes flicked over Shiro’s shoulder, intending to gesture back over towards the door but freezing when he was confronted with the image that had haunted his sleepless nights. The look was only glancing, but for a brief moment, Keith could see the inhuman amber of his Galran eyes staring back at him in his reflection. With the armor-clad visage of the Black Paladin looming in his peripherals, Keith could feel himself being drawn back to the cloning station, reliving his fight with whatever monster had been wearing Shiro’s face.

Shiro was speaking, trying to summon his attention, but his words were muffled and his presence seemed distant as Keith could only clench his fists to mute his feelings of fear. 

_KEITH!_

His name echoed throughout the silent chamber of tranquility offered by the mindscape of the Black Lion, shouted at him by the only other person that shared this bond with him. Shiro’s voice was a tether, dragging Keith out of the well of dread that he had succumbed to, and yanking him back to the realm of reality. 

“I… I’m here. I’m here.” Keith felt Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, and he couldn’t recall when it had been placed there. “I just… I need a minute. I’ll catch up with you.”

Shiro gave the Red Paladin a concerned look, but nodded all the same. “Okay. I’ll be right downstairs.” 

After Shiro took his leave, Keith walked over to the wall-length mirror. He studied himself, checking his reflection for signs of deceit or falsehoods. He pulled his eyelid down, searching the whites of his eyes for any deviations in the humanity that he was clinging on to, searching for the Galra in him so that it could be sealed away and forgotten. Then, he ran his tongue across his teeth, ensuring that they were as blunted as a human’s should be.

He was as human as he believed himself to be. 

With a large sigh, he started for the door, only stopping when his eyes again darted across his face. Something about him still looked _wrong_ , and it was…

_… the scar._

Keith dragged his gloved fingertips across the triangle of seared flesh, the darkened skin looking like the same fur patterns and markings that Krolia wore. These markings weren’t unique to his mother, as they were ubiquitous of the infantrymen that he had encountered in the Empire; these same markings were a trait more commonly found in Galra than that of the pupils that he would see floating amidst those golden pools of remorseless indifference.

He stared at his reflection with disdain. For as many emotional and psychological scars that his battle with Shiro’s clone had left, this one was a scathing reminder that he was not what he had convinced himself to be. 

He was _not_ human. 

Keith drove his fist through the reflective glass, shattering the spiteful stare that he was giving himself, and left the room.

***

The building that the group had sought refuge in was, at one point, Kar’Dam’s City Hall. Located in the center of the ruins, the superstructure was left largely undamaged by the Komar’s assault. The large, multi-floored building had been hastily converted into a staging area to house those Blades that been wounded in the evacuation of their base; the rest of the Blades were given board by the people that lived in town, crashing on spare beds and sofas in their homes at the behest of the families that wished to care for them. 

Those homes were now craters.

Keith traced his fingers along the railing as he walked out into the main foyer. 

The Paladins and the Alteans were all gathered in a room off to the side of the galley, finishing up what remained of the breakfast that Hunk had prepared for them, while Shiro, Krolia, and Kolivan stood at the base of the steps locked in a deep discussion. Upon seeing Keith emerge at the top of the stairs, the trio silenced their discussion, allowing Keith to join them before they would converse further. 

“Keith,” Krolia began, her gaze quickly darting to Kolivan for affirmation, “Might we have a word with you?”

Keith looked at Shiro, and Shiro placed a soft kiss against his cheek in reassurance. “I’ll get the team to their Lions. We’ll be ready to move when you give the order.” Shiro let his hand hold Keith’s, lingering for an empathetic second before he made a move to gather the rest of the Paladins.

Once the Black Paladin had given them the privacy they had requested, Krolia continued. “Keith, I’m sorry. I know that I said that I would never leave you again, but…” She couldn’t meet her son's eyes, her shame prevented her from doing so. “There is still an operable ship here. Kolivan and I can use it to rally what remains of the Blades.” 

Her words rang in his ears: hollow condolences and brittle justifications for yet another opportunity for his mother to flee. It hurt, but… he understood. He had already lost so many friends, and as much as he would have wanted to harbor these feelings of resentment towards his mother for her lackluster presence in his life- if she _could_ rebuild the family that they had lost, that would in some way act as penance for the damage she had already done.

“I know that there are things that I have done that can never be forgiven,” Krolia steeled herself to meet her son’s gaze, and the tears that formed in the edges of her eyes gave her a humanity that Keith had never before glimpsed. “There is… so much that I wish I could say, and yet… I just don’t know where to start.” She disguised an attempt at rubbing the tears away from her eyes by brushing her hair over her ear. “I’m sorry, Keith.” 

“I know you are.” Like Krolia, there was so much he still needed to say- so much damage that would need to be repaired that could only be healed with time they didn’t have. 

Meeting Krolia should have been a happier affair, yet the taste of joy had been soured by years of disappointment. When he had been much younger, he had dreamed of the day where his mother would enter his life- rescuing him from the foster care that he had despised. But reality was often disappointing, and after each passing week, his feelings of optimism would twist into feelings of bitterness, until he had decided that he no longer needed a mother.

He wanted to prove to her in the Quantum Abyss that she had been ten years too late.

But now, faced with the uncertain future of yet another goodbye, Keith could only feel the regret of having wasted their time together with pointless anger.

He needed to fix this, in case he wouldn’t have another chance.

“It’s okay, _mom.”_ The word hung in the air between the two of them- a final admission to the title that Keith had believed unworthy of bestowing upon her, and in its admission, forgiveness. Keith’s soul weighed heavy with so much: grief, pain, sadness… if this small gesture could in some way offer the two of them the closure that they had been skirting around for the past two years, perhaps it would set him upon what could one day be the path to recovering his own broken heart. 

She opened her arms to him: an offer.

And Keith stepped into her embrace without reservations, letting his mother hold him tight in her arms.

Krolia held her son, closing her eyes and losing herself to feelings that she had long since left buried. A single tear broke past her dam of resolve, streaming down her furred cheek. She didn’t want to let go, she didn’t want to lose him again; she wanted to turn back time until she was holding in her arms the small child that still needed her protection. But that time was past, and it was time to let go. 

Reluctantly, the two released each other.

Kolivan cleared his throat, stepping forward with his hands clasped behind his back, ever the image of stoical composure that Keith had remembered of the man. “Keith, I know that I may have been… _curt…_ in the past, but I-”

Keith didn’t need Kolivan to continue, and so- he stepped in close, and wrapped his arms around the Blade. He could barely reach around the wide profile of the Leader of the Blades, but he tried his best, fisting the pleated, purple tunic in his hands and squeezing Kolivan as tightly as he could. He would already know all the things that Kolivan wished to say, and any such sympathies would not need to be spoken. 

Kolivan held his arms raised up in surrender as the small human half-breed buried his face against the front of his uniform. While the gesture was not entirely foreign to him, receiving such _affection_ was still quite a shock. Kolivan let his arms fall across the boy’s back, pulling the smallest of the Blades against him and holding him as closely as he could manage without suffocating the little one. 

“I know that you are a Paladin,” Kolivan leaned down, speaking softly to the face pressed against him, “I know that your responsibilities lay outside the purview of Marmoran parameters.” Kolivan’s clawed hand came to rest against the back of Keith’s neck, comforting the child as if he were a kit of his own. “But you will _always_ be a Blade, and we will _always_ be family.”

Keith pulled away from Kolivan, his jaw clenched tight as he held his emotions at bay… as a Blade should. 

“Goodbye, Kolivan.”

“Goodbye, Keith.”

Keith turned back to his mother- the woman had been smiling at their display as if she approved of the camaraderie that existed between her son and their superior. But something seemed off. While the smile that pulled at the edges of her mouth cracked her otherwise curmudgeon demeanor, Krolia still appeared perturbed- her arms crossed over her chest and her body language betraying her smile in order to make her appear somehow more austere and standoffish than Kolivan.

Both Galra were massive, imposing individuals whose mere presence felt like a threat. Yet despite the scar that twisted Kolivan’s face into the very definition of unapproachability, his mother somehow seemed like the more menacing of the pair. Keith’s eyes darted between the two of them, seeking an answer to the question he couldn’t quite place, until he realized that she didn’t _look_ like a Blade. 

The Imperial armor that Krolia wore already provided a stark contrast to the black and purple Marmoran uniform that Kolivan sported, and the sidearm that was strapped to her thigh further illustrated the discordance between them, as the leader of the Blades’ hands rested upon the dual swords strapped to either side of his hips.

Suddenly, the difference between the two became very clear to Keith.

Krolia was a Blade without a blade.

Keith’s hands drifted down to his belt, his right landing upon the hilt of ‘his’ knife -where it had always been placed- at the small of his back, his left clutching at the scabbard containing Vrek’s blade. His fingers squeezed around the familiar handle behind his back, a nervous habit of which he had thought himself rid of; the knife had always been there with him, and it provided him with the comfort and security that he had so desperately needed in his formative years. In spite of his mother’s absence, a part of her had always been there to protect him, but Keith was no longer a boy in need of his mother’s protection. 

His grip around his mother’s knife loosened, and he redoubled his grip around Vrek’s blade. Now, his mate would protect him, as he would have wanted to. 

Keith unclasped the small knife from his belt and offered the luxite back to her. “Take it. It was always yours to begin with.”

Krolia reached out to the blade, letting her hand hold her son’s before she would remove the knife from his grasp. “This isn’t goodbye, Keith. We’ll see each other again.”

“I know-” He stopped, correcting himself, “I _hope_ we do. But…” He looked up into his mother’s eyes, her iris’ so much like his own- the deep purple swimming with a complex flurry of sadness and remorse. “In the event we don’t… _please_ let me say it. I don’t want to regret not saying it.”

She knew the pain that was consuming her son: the pain of words not spoken, farewell’s not uttered, and final moments not appreciated. She would not deny him this. _“Okay.”_

Keith nodded, his voice cracking into a higher octave as he squeaked out, “Goodbye, mom.” He bit down on his tongue, replacing the emotional pain with a physical one that he could manage, the iron tinge of blood filling his mouth as he tore his eyes away from the absentee mother and the surrogate father that he would be leaving behind. 

He turned his back to the Galra, and returned to his Lion. He needed to leave this godforsaken place.

When he approached the Black Lion, he found Shiro and Kosmo waiting outside the maw of the war machine. The red tint of blood painted the corners of his lips and complimented his equally red eyes as he pushed past the two and stepped across the threshold of this planet and back into the safety of his Lion. 

Shiro and Kosmo joined Keith in the cockpit, with the cosmic wolf shoving it’s massive head between the seat and the steering levers in order to rest his head on Keith’s lap, and the Black Paladin resting his hand against Keith’s shoulder. The question that they were both asking would not need to be spoken, and Keith would answer them both.

  
  
  
  
  


“I’m fine.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He wasn’t.

***

The ship had once belonged to the people of Kar’Dam. It was old, with its pilot’s seat well-worn and form-fitted to someone much smaller than Kolivan. The ship had no shields, no weapons, and it would barely have enough power to break atmosphere; it was all they had, and it was more than what either Blade could have asked for. 

Kolivan ran the ship through its pre-flight sequence, firing up the drive core and reconfirming the course that they had plotted that would -with any luck- reunite them with the final remnants of their order. The fuel gage above the console provided them with another stroke of luck, as the analog indicator read as _‘FULL’_. Kolivan eyed the indicator with wary suspicion, and reached up to flick the circular read out. At the slightest tap of the glass, the hand within the dial immediately fell to _‘HALF’_.

“Hmmm.” Kolivan’s eyes narrowed as he scowled at the gage. _Typical_ , he thought to himself. 

“Stress test complete. The ship will hold in vacuum… barely.” Krolia’s voice crackled over the ship’s intercom, “We should have enough supplies to make it for a few systems.”

“Acceptable.” Kolivan responded, “Get back up to the cockpit. We’re leaving.”

He stretched his arm out across the console, his clawed fingers hovering over the ignition switch. 

His hand was trembling.

Kolivan sighed, letting out a deep and steady breath as he pulled his hand back, using his free hand to wrap around his wrist. He squeezed, cutting off the circulation until he could control his tremors once more. Once his hand stopped shaking, he reached under the hem of his suit, exposing the two bond bracelets that now circled his wrist. He spared but a moment to stare at the two braided strands of fabric around his arm, his bracelet- red, gold, and black- a sight he was familiar with. The second bracelet, formerly Antok’s, was cut from his wrist and tied around his own when he had laid his body to rest amongst the other Blades. Antok’s bond bracelet was a peaceful blue, a shining silver, and a pure white. It still felt wrong to see these colors on his wrist, and not on his mate’s. 

Kolivan tucked the bracelets back under his suit’s sleeve, and reached again for the ignition. 

The ship groaned, buckling and quaking as it roared to life, sounding like it was going to shake itself apart as fuel was injected into the ship’s engine. It ached as it strained to drag itself off of the ground and moaned as metal flexed and settled under the effort. The derelict transport shuttle sounded as if it was being tortured as it finally started to gain altitude. 

The noises were unbearable to Kolivan. 

_It’s just a ship._ He reminded himself. _It’s just a ship._

Kolivan covered his eyes with a massive palm, instantly regretting the darkness that the action had plunged him into. 

He had spent nearly an entire decaphoeb at the mercy of Macidus, in the dark and cold, kept company by the sounds of his dying mate. The noises of pain that had been clawed out of Antok’s throat had been unendurable, his groans and screams usually accompanied by the shrill laughter of the sadistic druid that was holding them captive. 

Every day, Macidus would claim more of Antok’s life. Macidus was stealing Antok’s quintessence, and the decaphoebs were starting to show on his mate- as Antok’s youth started to betray his increasingly aging appearance. He wouldn’t admit it to himself, but Kolivan was having a harder and harder time facing his mate; they were supposed to age _together_ , live _together_ , and die _together_. The druid was forcing him to bear witness not only to the murder of his bond mate, but the death of the future that they were supposed to share with one another.

Before the strength had left Kolivan’s body entirely, he had lowered himself to groveling and begging at the druid’s feet. “ _Please_ ,” he had cried, “Take _me_. Spare him. Take _me_ instead.”

Macidus did not listen. He did not care for Kolivan’s request, only that he had _broken_ the esteemed leader of the Blade of Marmora. A world had been laid to ruin, and the traitor hadn’t blinked. The innocent were sacrificed, and the man did not bend. His men had been executed, and still- the Blade didn’t yield. It was only when his attention had been turned to the Cybrachian hybrid did the tears start to flow freely from the great Kolivan’s eyes. He reveled in those tears, and laughed as he pulled the last of the quintessence out of the one he called Antok.

In the final moments of Antok’s life, he had smiled at Kolivan, telling him, _“Koli… it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s okay, Koli...”_

Here, in the now, Kolivan would remind himself that his mate was right. Things were going to be okay. 

He would make sure of it. 

Kolivan clenched and unclenched his fists, settling his grip upon the controls for their transport as the cockpit door hissed open behind him. Krolia took the seat beside his own, watching out of the viewport as the Voltron Lions took flight and disappeared over the horizon. 

The silence that befell the cockpit was uncomfortable. 

“You have something you wish to say.” Krolia busied herself with familiarizing herself with their flight plan. 

“I do.” Kolivan replied. “But in all our time working together, you have yet to take any of the advice I have offered you.” 

“And yet…” Krolia sighed, turning to face Kolivan directly. 

“And yet,” Kolivan confirmed, continuing, “I feel as if I must remind you of the conversation that we had when you first returned from Earth, _nineteen phoebs overdue_ since your last check in with the Blade.” 

Krolia met Kolivan with silence, either in deference or denial.

“You had told me that you had birthed a kit, and I responded by saying what a reckless and foolhardy decision that was. But… It made me understand your absence, and as great a loss of an agent of your talents would be, I did not fault you for wanting to leave the Blades.” Once the ship had breached Kar’Dam’s upper atmosphere, and broken free of the planet’s gravitational pull, Kolivan turned to face Krolia. “But you did not leave the Blades, instead you left your kit.”

“You do not need to remind me of my own actions, Kolivan.”

“No, and far be it my place to criticize your life choices, however, abandoning your kit… I have never known a more brazen lapse in judgement.” Kolivan’s words were stated without malice or judgement- his candor was his kindness.

“Kolivan,” Krolia started, regurgitating one of the lies that she had fed to herself in the years following the desertion of her mate and child, “We were at war, and if I hadn’t left Earth, then Regris would have-”

“Krolia, you should not justify the abandonment of one child with the rescue of another. The morality of our deeds is not something we should use to keep score with the universe. We are better than that. _You_ are better than that.” Kolivan paused, letting his words hang between them. “I assigned Keith to your extraction specifically to facilitate the reunion that you had been avoiding.”

“I was not-”

“I informed you of a Galra/Human hybrid that had passed his trials and had awoken the blade that you had once crafted. There are only so many coincidences in this universe. You could have returned to see your son, and yet- you refused reassignment.”

“My position at Ranveig’s base was not something that could be…” Krolia stopped herself, swallowing her words before she could draw attention to the hypocrisy of her reasoning. 

“... abandoned?” Kolivan completed the thought for her. “Yes. Some things are indeed too important for you to leave.” Kolivan returned his attention back to the console before him, “In any event, I had sought to rectify the mistake you had made so long ago. Perhaps that was presumptuous of me, but I thought that the opportunity would do you both some good.”

Krolia pulled her son’s knife… _her knife_ … into her lap, and eyed the glowing luxite with the same forlorn look she had when she had relinquished the blade to Tex back on Earth. The choice she had made to leave Earth had been out of cowardice; for all the false justifications she had conjured, for all the lies that she had fabricated in her defense, her decision to leave Earth had been born out of the fear that she would fail her son.

In another life, she had led the Blades: her predecessor had deemed her worthy of every accolade and deserving of every merit, making her choice of successor clear. Krolia was an exemplary Blade, and her accomplishments as an agent only served to bolster her claim to leadership. Krolia had accepted the position with great ceremony, eager to validate her promotion with successful strikes against the Empire, yet too late would she learn that great victories would come at a great cost. The lives that she would sacrifice would be numerous, as every Blade she had knowingly sent to their death had placed her one step closer to victory, and one step further away from herself.

Perhaps her ego had blinded her to the risks, or perhaps she had been too young to understand the currency in which wars were waged. Regardless of the reasons, she had rushed into her new responsibilities with zealous enthusiasm, and had emerged broken and exhausted. 

_Never again._

Krolia relinquished command of the Blades to Kolivan, and had returned to doing what she had known herself to be good at. She was an operative. Here to fight. 

She ran from Earth because she was afraid. She ran from her son because she had been crippled by the weight of responsibility in the past. Krolia didn’t know the first thing about raising a kit, and it was that uncertainty that had driven her back to the Blades, and back to the only thing that she had known that she could do well.

Krolia was given wisdom by her failures, and perspective from her losses. Rejecting the responsibilities of leadership had been the best decision she had made, both for herself, and for their order. Her ego ruined her, and she would not let it ruin her son. So she had left Earth, ironically, with Keith’s best interests at heart. 

“Keith deserves better than me.”

“The choice is yours to make, Krolia.” Kolivan said with a certain amount of resignation, “But don’t you think that Keith should be the one to make that decision?”

Krolia squeezed the knife in her hands, before returning the blade to its sheath and taking comfort in the familiarity that its presence provided. She offered Kolivan a weak smile, “Why did you never have children of your own?”

“I did.” Kolivan offered without hesitation, his eyes turning to the rear-view projection displayed on the console before him. He stared at Kar’Dam as the planet drifted further away, its presence disappearing from his sight, but never from his mind. “And they can never be replaced.”

***

It had been four days since the Paladins had left Kar’Dam, and they felt no closer to Earth than they did when they had started their voyage.

Routine could only stretch the group’s mental acuity so far; the vastness of space provided no comfort to the Paladins as the infinite laid bare before them. Staring out into the blackness, they could see no end in sight, and the possibility of their failure began to seem like an inevitability

The Paladins would reconvene every few hours, readjusting their course to correct their bearings according to Pidge’s calculations.

It was late in what the Paladins would consider a full day’s rotation, with Romelle, Coran, and Shiro having retired to the more comfortable accommodations that had been made in each respective Lion’s cargo hold. 

While the rest of the Paladins fell into some semblance of regimen, Shiro had been working tirelessly, depriving himself of peace and working himself ragged plotting their course and planning their stops around the clearly defined trajectory that Pidge had calculated. As urgently as they had all wished to return to Earth, Shiro didn’t want to see the group burned out before they had made it back to the Sol System. His itinerary would have to be airtight, allowing the Paladins time to rest, forage supplies, and recuperate- all while maintaining steady progress towards their destination. 

But while Shiro had been spending his days with Pidge in the Green Lion, his nights would be spent with Keith in the Black Lion. These night’s had provided him with a welcome reprieve from the stress and the mundanity of his tasks, the warm furnace of the body beside him lulling him into a sleep that even his nightmares could not disturb. 

The rest of the team had, by now, noticed the gentle touches shared between their former and current leader. No one would bring attention to it. Keith and Shiro had been circling each other for quite some time, and the blossoming relationship between them had been apparent to everyone except, evidently, Keith and Shiro themselves. Everyone was happy for them, sharing amongst themselves knowing smiles every time Shiro would blush or sneak what he believed to be subtle glances over at the Red Paladin. 

A long, almost comically exaggerated yawn rang through the speakers in every Lion’s cockpit. 

“Sorry, sorry.” Hunk quickly apologized, “That was me. I forgot my mic was on. Man… these three-hour power naps really aren’t conducive to… well… _anything_ , really. I feel like I’m more tired now than I had been before I went to sleep.”

An apology wouldn’t be necessary, as they all shared the same sentiment.

“I must admit, even I am feeling rather fatigued.” Allura added, “Where is it we are now, Pidge?”

Directly in front of all the Lions, laid what could only be described as a hurricane in space: lightning surged through dark storm clouds, coursing through the abyss like a blizzard in a snow globe. The spatial anomaly looked angry, and more frighteningly, it looked _ready_ for the Paladins.

“That,” Pidge began, sharing what knowledge she had memorized from the Castle of Lion’s former database, “Is the Taxius Nebula.”

“And what is that?” Lance asked.

[[ >|| ]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9nGT-ni4GA&ab_channel=TronLegacy)

“Well, no one really knows. Not for sure, at least.” Pidge tried fruitlessly scanning the storm from the Green Lion, forwarding back the _‘[ERROR]’_ messages she received in response to the other Paladins. “The dense magnetosphere surrounding the perimeter makes it impossible to penetrate the storm with any type of scientific instruments. But… I have a theory: I think it might be a combination of hyperdense O2 and positively charged ion particles, all trapped within an ionosphere that’s being held together by an obscenely powerful Birkeland current.”

 _“SoOoooOoooOooo…”_ Hunk mused, “It’s like a Gas Giant, but with a magnetic field instead of a gravitational pull?”

“More or less.” Pidge confirmed, “The logs that I did read back in the Castle mentioned a bunch of research vessels vanishing without a trace, never to be heard from again. Think of it like the Bermuda Triangle, but the size of _VY Canis Majoris_.” She sounded almost too excited.

“So what exactly is _in_ there, Pidge?” Keith asked, getting straight to the point.

“If I were to assume… wreckage of some ancient ships, asteroids that got trapped, maybe some dwarf planets, nothing dangerous. We’ll find out for sure once we’re inside, I suppose.” She offered.

 _“Wait,”_ Lance interjected, “Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. Wait. Didn’t you say that ships _disappeared_ in there? And I quote-” Lance threw up air-quotes, despite no one being able to see them through the Lion’s radio, “' _Never to be heard from again’_ ? And you’re telling me we’re going _inside_ there?”

“We’ve got a better chance than most.” Pidge stated rather calmly. “The Lions were made with ore from a _trans-reality_ comet. Besides, I’m dropping two infrared buoys to triangulate our position with. As long as we continue on a path relative to our point of entry, we _should_ be able to navigate our way through the nebula without getting lost forever. The worst we _should_ face is some mild turbulence going through the magnetosphere.”

“See?” Lance scoffed, “It’s the way she throws around the word _‘should’_ so easily that worries me. Am I crazy?”

“Pidge,” Keith summoned her attention once more, “Is this the best route we have?”

“Yes.” She said firmly, and without hesitation. “Going through this nebula will put us within spitting distance of the Milky Way. It’s our only option.”

Keith nodded to himself. She was right, they didn’t have any other options available to them. “Then buckle up for some chop, people. We’re going in.”

The team could hear Lance audibly gulp through their intercom, but the Paladins persisted, and steered their Lions into the heart of the storm.

Both the Black and Yellow Lions took point, as the largest and most heavily armored of the Voltron Lions, they would be able to withstand the unexpected. The maelstrom that loomed before them seemed all encompassing, the oncoming tempest raging in the vacuum. Arcs of lightning shot out towards the Voltron Lions, like tentacles attempting to snare new prey. 

The Lions pressed through the stormwall, swallowed whole by the oppressive darkness, the blackness of the nebula’s outer atmosphere darker than the void of space itself. Chunks of ice and snow whipped past the Lion’s cockpit with impressive speeds, hail carried on the cosmic winds of the destructive hurricane they were wading through. A lesser ship would have been shaken to pieces from the gusting winds that were scraping and clawing against the Lion’s hull, but the Voltron Lions had pierced the walls of their own reality, and they would not be deterred by a breeze.

Keith tightened his grip around the Black Lion’s flight sticks, pulling against the vibrations that were reverberating through his controls. “Pidge?”

“We should be almost through this!”

Something large and metallic bounced off of the reinforced armor of the Yellow Lion, debris from a sunken ship ricocheting off of the hull- eliciting a surprised yelp out of it’s Paladin. 

The vibration in Keith’s controls increased, the flight sticks quaking in Keith’s grip as the Black Lion fought for control against the elements. 

And then, in an instant, peace. 

[[ >|| ]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrgSBop0AOI&ab_channel=PeachesLamb)

The Lions emerged from the nebula’s ionosphere to be blinded by the light shining through the darkness; they had made it through the perimeter and ventured into the unknown. 

The turbulence disappeared, replaced with the feeling of…

Keith closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath of recycled oxygen as he recalled the nostalgic feeling of having first stepped into the cockpit of an F-70 _‘Raven Crusader’_ at the Galaxy Garrison. Taking to the skies had been an liberating feeling: in the air, Keith could feel _free-_ restrained only by having been forced to abide by flight formations and protocol. 

The Voltron Lions were bulky, cumbersome things meant for space-travel, their design the antithesis to the aerodynamics of in-atmosphere fighters. 

But _this feeling,_ the feeling of soaring through clear skies with wind racing beneath your wings… This feeling would never change, and it could never be spoiled.

 _“Whoa…”_ Hunk said, the awe apparent in his voice. “Look at _that.”_

Keith opened his eyes. 

The harsh border of the nebula contained what could only be described as an oasis. Pidge’s theory was right- the super dense O2 contained within the edges of the storm created an oxygen rich atmosphere… trapped water molecules within the nebula formed _clouds…_ and the red dwarf at the center of the nebula bathed everything in a serene orange glow that looked very reminiscent of an earthborn sunset.

“It looks like home.” Hunk said softly. 

The Paladins drifted through the nebula, passing asteroid belts and abandoned ships in near silence as they floated amongst the clouds.

“After dinner,” Pidge began, “I would climb up onto our roof and watch the sunset. My dad would join me. We’d sit up on the roof until the stars would come out, and we would count all the constellations together.” A smile graced the Green Paladin’s face as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “And whenever dad was up in space, Matt would join me on that roof. We’d stare up at the sky and see if we could spot our dad in orbit. I promised myself that one day, I’d be up there with him.”

Pidge’s smile would be contagious, as the other Paladins would soon find themselves recalling the lives they’d led when they had too once been children, waiting for their family, waiting for opportunity, and waiting for the future.

“It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school when I passed the Garrison’s aptitude test.” Lance added, “That was the last summer I had back home... I spent that last day with my friends, walking down the boardwalk… my mom would typically have me get back home by five, ya know? But… I stayed out with my friends on that beach until we could barely stay awake… long into the night. Maybe she knew that I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while.”

“Back on Altea,” There was a pause from Allura, as if she was still trying to come to terms with the reality of her planet’s destruction, perhaps still hoping her world was still out in the universe, not gone- but merely lost. “The royal family had a retreat we would stay at in the summer months. The lake beside the palace was excavated from an old mineral mine: the water was dyed red from the salt deposits found there. Whenever the sun would rise over that lake, there would be a brief moment where the light would catch against the water, and the entire sky would change color. It looked a lot like this. It was beautiful.” There was another pause, one that the Paladins would only imagine would be the reminiscence of another childhood memory of which could never be re-lived or revisited. Allura’s next question was hesitant, her words cautious, but the question was posed nonetheless, “What… does this remind _you_ of, Keith?”

The silence between the Paladins grew as Keith stared out into the abyss.

Keith pulled his hands away from the Lion’s controls, his left hand wrapping around the bond bracelet on his wrist, his right reaching up to paw at the bond mark covered by his Paladin armor. 

“Karrahe…” He said, barely audible enough for his microphone to pick up. He could have told the team that the sight reminded him of his shack out in the Arizona desert, escaping with a simple answer without having the need to elaborate. 

But…

As Keith gazed into the red-tinged, orange-hued skies before him, his mind was drawn back to the time when Vrek had tied his bond bracelet around his wrist- the Galra Pure Blood’s ears pulled back against his scalp and his face flushed in a deep violet over his embarrassment at Keith’s wholehearted endorsement of the love that they shared.

It had been a happy moment, and it is what Keith wanted to see in the star before him.

“What is a _Karrahe_?” Hunk asked.

Keith smiled, his fingers slipping under the neckline of his bodysuit to touch the line of teeth marks still nestled against his scent gland. “It’s… _was_.... Vrek’s homeworld.” Keith stopped himself, contemplating whether or not to hold back the intimacy of the moments he had shared with Vrek, however, there was a time when Keith had wanted nothing more than to call the Paladins to scream his excitement and show them his bond bracelet. He had wanted to revel in the fact that their bonding had been made ‘official’ to all those that would see them, and he had wanted, deep down, for them to be _happy_ for him. 

“I umm…” Keith swallowed, attempting to capture the emotion behind the story that he could not possibly hope to convey, “I guess you could say it’s where Vrek _proposed_ to me. We rode out on a hoverbike, watched the sunset, and Vrek gave me this bond bracelet.” Keith pulled his hand away from his neck so that he could properly stare at the braided strands of fabric around his wrist.

They were just as breathtaking now as they had been when he had first laid eyes on them.

“What was he like?” Pidge asked, “Vrek, I mean.”

A shiver coursed through Keith’s spine, his response defensive and automatic. “Why? What’s it to you?” He winced the instant the words had left his mouth; his words had been clipped, and crueler than he’d intended. 

Shockingly, his antagonizing words were not met with an equally combative response. Instead, it was Hunk’s voice that encouraged him to continue, “Well… he sounds like he was important to you. And if he meant that much to you, then he should mean something to us.”

The tension in Keith’s shoulders eased as he sagged back into his seat. “Vrek....” He began, “He was brilliant. One of the youngest Blades to ever to be promoted to second medic. And he was _the youngest_ to ever be accepted into the galaxy’s most prestigious Medical Academy on Karrahe. Regris once said-”

“No, Keith.” Allura interjected, “We don’t need to know who he was to the Blades. Who was Vrek _to you?”_

Keith considered the question, continuing to stare down at his bond bracelet as he rolled the fabric between his thumb and pointer finger. 

“He… he was kind.” Keith couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on his face, “He gave up his dreams of being a doctor because he couldn’t bring himself to join the ranks of the Empire. He ran to the Blades, and came crashing straight into my life. He always supported me. He always had my back. When he was with me- I… I felt invincible, and when he held me, I felt like I didn’t _have to be_ invincible. When I was with him, I always felt like I was right where I needed to be.”

“Keith, that’s beautiful.” Allura’s low voice sounded tender through the radio, “He sounds quite wonderful.”

“Yeah… he… he was.” Keith’s hands fell back to the controls of the Black Lion, stopping briefly to graze the sheathed blade leaned up against his Lion’s console. 

Idle static permeated the Black Lion’s cockpit, leaving Keith to reminisce and long for the time now past.

“Was he hot?” Lance blurted out.

“LANCE!” Allura chastised.

“Yeah... way to ruin the moment, Lance.” Pidge added. 

_“WHAT?”_ Lance raised his arms in a mockery of self-defense, “I’m just tryin’ to get a good mental picture of the guy! Like… What are we talking about here? Are we talkin’ a _Taujeerian-Two?_ Or like… an _Olkari-Eight?_ Or a _Mer-Ten?”_

Keith laughed through the comm, leaning his head back and recalling the casual indifference he had once shown the Blade Medic. An indifference that evaporated entirely the first time he had seen Vrek _laugh_. _‘Unmemorable’_ is how he’d once thought to describe Vrek- and the thought now almost seemed insulting. Vrek had been perfect in every way. “He was pretty hot.” Keith indulged the Blue Paladin some, “Definitely what I would call a ten. _Way_ more attractive than any of the _Mer_.” 

_“OooOoOooh_. Alright Mullet, color me impressed. Come on, show us some pics. This I gotta see.”

“What? Don’t believe me?” Keith’s toothy grin betrayed his dour emotions, this small moment of gossip and ribbing allowing him to feel like a teenager again.

“Well, I’ve never heard you talk about _anyone_ like that before. I just _have_ to see what a _ten_ is according to your tastes!” Lance goaded the Red Paladin, but it was all in good fun- a meaningless distraction from their current predicament, and all the Paladins welcomed it.

 _“Ugh,”_ Keith groaned rather exaggeratedly, his tablet already in his hand as he flicked through all of his apps. “Fine, I guess.”

He waved past the numerous time-wasting games, past the downloaded episodes of _‘Boh-Be Bu Boo-Bee-Bii’_ , and past all the bookmarked documents about the history of Kantroosh that Antok had supplied him with- until he arrived at the assortment of applications he seemed to never use. 

Keith tapped the icon labeled _‘Photos’._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**[0 PHOTOS TO DISPLAY]**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He paused, his eyes scanning the message again and again in disbelief. 

_No, that… that can’t be right_ , he thought to himself. _Surely, there must be something. Some memory… some moment… some point in time that I had taken a single picture._

He hadn’t. 

Keith closed the app, and then reopened it, hoping to be greeted with something, anything, instead of the dispassionate and shattering notification of-

  
  
  


**[0 PHOTOS TO DISPLAY]**

  
  
  


_No. No, no, no._ Keith wracked his brain, scouring for a single moment- a single time that he had used his tablet to photograph the two of them together. 

It was useless. Such a time didn’t exist.

“... I can’t.” Keith whispered.

 _“Whaaat?_ Come on,” Lance teased, “Let’s see him! We won’t judge.”

“No, Lance. I _can’t.”_ The gravity of Keith’s words were not immediately felt by the Paladins, as the realization was slow, hitting the team like a kettle being brought to boil.

_“Oh…”_

“I… I need to...” Keith stammered, his tablet discarded and dropped to the floor. He clicked off his microphone, disabling his outgoing comms so that he might have some privacy. The other Paladins would hear the soft click as he disconnected from their conversation, and they would in turn silence their comms as well, affording their leader all the privacy possible. 

Keith reached over and grabbed Vrek’s blade from its resting place against the Black Lion’s console, pulling it tightly to his chest. He braced his boots on the edge of his seat, pulling his knees up close and curling in on himself.

He closed his eyes tight, recalling the mental image he held of his bond mate. In his mind, Keith studied every detail he could conjure of Vrek: his plush lavender fur, his strong cheekbones and sharp jawline, the golden yellow of his kind eyes, and his smile… the smile that had melted the misconceptions he had once held and had filled his life with unbridled joy. Keith needed to see that smile, the smile that would now only exist in his memories.

Keith bit down on his knuckle, tears pricking at his eyes as his teeth bore down into his fist. He had known that Vrek was _gone…_ but only now, deprived of any lasting images of his mate, did Vrek feel so distant. 

Keith rifled through all of the memories he had of Vrek -at the base, in their nest, Karrahe, Feyiv, Senfamma, every mission they had together- and ingrained every small, minute detail of his existence into his mind. He would not be forgotten. Keith would remember the way he looked, the way he smelled, the way it had felt to be held by him...

His arms slipped around himself, crossing over his knees to claw their way up his biceps, until Keith was holding himself in what was a poor substitution for the mate he had lost. The comfort he allotted himself paled in comparison to the way Vrek had held him: his big, clawed fingers stretching out over his back- radiating warmth and reassurance as his scent eased his fears with an intoxicating relaxation.

_Keith…_

A soft voice called out to him. It was muted, remote, yet… intensely familiar, as if a memory was reaching out to him from behind a pane of glass. Clawed fingers from long, outstretched arms drew small circles around his back as Keith was embraced by a familiar presence- a protective hand holding together the fractured bits of his heart in its delicate grasp. 

There was a gust of air against his neck, a breath -first hot, and then cool- right up against his scent gland. The feeling acted like a sedative to his grief-addled anxieties. It was a feeling that Keith had not felt in _so long_ , one that he had ached and yearned for in the quietest moments of his suffering. 

With neither inquiry nor restraint, Keith breathed in, drinking deep of the wonderful alpha scent of his mate: the faint hint of sterilizing agents trying to mask the smell of _home_ and grass-after-rain. 

_I missed you_ , Keith thought out, his own fingers digging into his arms as he clung to the ghost of what he thought to be a memory. 

“Keith?” 

“Vrek?” Keith opened his eyes, whipping his head up and towards the direction of the voice. 

Shiro paused in the entryway to the Black Lion’s cockpit, his flesh hand steading himself against the doorway as he sucked in a breath and responded with, “No, Keith. I’m sorry.”

“Shiro. _Fuck_ , I-” Keith rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands, wiping away the wetness that had gathered there before returning Vrek’s blade to its place next to him and settling his feet back down on the floor. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay, Keith. You don’t have to apologize.” Shiro crossed the length of the cockpit and stopped just out of arm's reach. He eyed the blade that Keith had been holding before turning to offer the Paladin a sympathetic smile. “Do you want some time alone?” 

“No.” Keith responded quickly, clearing the hoarseness in his throat with a quick cough. “Fuck, no. I don’t. I want you here with me.”

Shiro’s posture visibly relaxed; the worried anxiousness in his face dissipated as he stepped closer to Keith in order to offer the boy a shoulder to cry on.

Keith all but leaped out of his seat and into Shiro’s waiting embrace, wrapping his arms around the Black Paladin’s neck and clinging to him with all the fervor of a drowning man scrambling for a life-preserver. Without much thought, Keith pressed his nose against the side of Shiro’s neck, and breathed deep. 

A startled Shiro flinched, his head turning a bit to offer Keith a questioning glance, before twisting his head out of the way to give Keith better access to his neck. The gesture wasn’t one that Shiro was familiar with, but it was one that seemed instinctual to Keith now, and so- Shiro let Keith’s instincts guide him.

Keith ran his nose up against the side of Shiro’s neck, basking in the rich scent of the Black Paladin. Shiro was, of course, not a Galran Alpha- and therefore could not provide the biological comforts that Keith was craving. Yet, regardless of their differences in physiology, Shiro was _here,_ and he was familiar, and that alone felt like a beacon in the dark. Keith buried his nose against the man’s neck and basked in what smells filled the olfactory receptors. Shiro smelled of soldered smoke and iron- a far cry from the consoling scent he was used to. Still… it was _something_.

“Does this… help?” Shiro asked, his hand resting at the top of Keith’s spine and slowly stroking down his armored back before returning itself to the base of his neck in order to repeat the motion. 

“Mmmhmmmm.” Keith responded dutifully. With the worst of his emotions remedied by Shiro’s presence, Keith settled his arms around Shiro’s waist and leaned in to rest his face against the breastplate of his armor. “I feel better.” He said, “The… the scenting… it’s _a Galra thing.”_

The words sounded spiteful, seething with resent and dripping with venom. 

“Well… I don’t mind it being _our_ thing.” Shiro offered Keith as tight an embrace possible with his singular arm. Shiro saw how uncomfortable the acknowledgement of Keith’s lineage made him feel, how he had bitten back his words when Hunk had inquired about the bracelet on his wrist. He had hoped that Keith’s time with the Blade would have helped him to reconcile his own burgeoning cultural guilt, but it seemed that such time only deepened the feelings he had. Keith’s guilt had evolved into a more passionate form of self-loathing, and- after having seen the desolation on Kar’Dam, Shiro could hardly blame him.

But this was no way for Keith to live. 

  
“Keith, listen...” Shiro started, “I know that you’re not-” 

A flash of red in along the console of the Black Lion halted Shiro’s train of thought, the comm crackling back to life as Pidge’s voice was fed through the speakers.

“Hang on, I’m picking up a distress beacon from _inside_ the nebula.” 

“Who would be crazy enough to fly through this?” Lance countered. “Other than us, that is.”

“Probably someone in just as much of a hurry…” Hunk offered. 

“Pidge,” Keith clicked his microphone back on and steadied his voice, letting some semblance of authority blanket his insecurities, “Can you get a read on their IFF transponder? Who is out here with us?”

The sound of tapping filled the dead air as Pidge typed away at the haptic displays across her console. “Unknown. Whoever they are, they should still be able to pick us up if you broadcast on an open frequency.”

“Have they spotted us?” Keith asked.

“Unlikely, the nebula is too thick to get a proper read on anything inside and out. Radar, sonar… it’s pretty scrambled.”

Keith paused, throwing a cautioned look at Shiro before tapping a few buttons across his dash. An orange light blinked once before turning green. A line was open. 

“Vessel of unknown origin,” Keith spoke clearly and calmly, holding down the broadcast button and disguising the anguish in his heart with stoicism and surety. He had learned from the best. “Identify yourselves and state your distress.”

The Paladins waited on bated breath through the static and interference. 

“Thank the ancestors,” A very relieved voice sighed on the other side of the radio, “We didn’t think anyone would come looking for us. This is Galra Shuttle Pod Kandek-twelve, our ship is dead in the water, our food supplies are running low, and we have no way of navigating our way out of the nebula. We are in dire need of assistance.”

 _Galra._ A growl slipped past Keith’s composure, the side of his lips twitching up like a feral animal ready to bare its fangs.

“Hey! More Galra!” Hunk said excitedly over the privacy of the Paladin’s closed frequency. “Maybe it’s some of the fleet we ran into! We can save these ones and have them give our regards to Commander Bogh!” 

Hunk’s optimism was inspiring, yet naive. 

The Yellow Paladin had intended to extend an olive branch out to these Galra, convinced that lending a helping hand could in some way absolve them of having failed to save the Blades. He wanted to believe that Keith needed to heal, and that _rescuing_ what he would miscategorize as _more of Keith’s people_ would in some way mend his grieving heart. 

Shiro leaned forward over the Black Lion’s console, holding down the open broadcast button as he spoke. “Galra Shuttle Pod Kandek-twelve. This is Takashi Shirogane of the Voltron Coalition. We stand by ready to offer our support. But first, state your crew numbers and affiliation.”

Shiro’s words were met with silence, a silence much longer than necessary for the distressed to have received his inquiry. 

After what seemed like an unreasonably long pause, nervous murmurs and a reluctant response replied to them.

“Takashi Shirogane of the Voltron Coalition,” The voice was uncertain, wavering like the confidence of a man stepping out onto a frozen pond- only to feel the ice fracture beneath his feet. “We are a crew of nine. Representing the Fire of Purification.”

There was a heavy, weighted moment of quiet that lingered over the comms before the Galra continued. 

“Please… _help us.”_

Keith clenched his fist, his knuckles whitening around the controls of the Black Lion as Kolivan’s words echoed through his memories. The words of a broken man lamenting the mistakes of his past rang in Keith’s ears and stoked the embers of his rage, _“They besieged our base. Attacking without warning. It wasn’t warfare, it was a slaughter.”_

 _Was Vrek there?_ The anger boiled up inside the Red Paladin. _Did they show him mercy? Did they show any of the Blades mercy? Did you help them?_

He already knew these answers, and it only served to anger him further.

_“... it was a slaughter.”_

Keith shook Kolivan’s words out of his head, replacing the rancid thoughts that buzzed in his brain with malice of his own.

 _We should just leave them here_ , he thought. _Let them die. Let them starve to death like animals they are. It’s what they deserve._

Keith’s thoughts were cruel, but ‘ _The Fire of Purification’_ was a hideous, putrid cancer that deserved such reciprocity. Cruelty begets more cruelty, and as such- Keith was finding it difficult to offer any words of protest in defense of _‘Galra Shuttle Pod Kandek-twelve’._

Shiro’s hand found Keith’s, the warm touch resting over the tightened grip suffocating the Black Lion’s flight stick. Keith relaxed his hand, his fist easing off the controls before his claws threatened to tear through the tips of his fingers.

After a deep, centering breath, Keith leaned forward to broadcast back to the shuttle, “Galra Shuttle, the Paladins of Voltron are standing by and ready to assist.

***

The Black Lion snatched the drifting Galra Shuttle in its massive claws, and set the shuttle down atop a hill on a large satellite amidst an asteroid belt orbiting the nebula’s red dwarf.

Back on solid ground, team Voltron landed and exited their Lions in order to greet the Galra soldiers that disembarked the disabled shuttle craft. Keith and Shiro led the Paladins across the barren moon to meet those that had pleaded for their help. 

Tensions were high, and the apprehension in the air was palpable.

The Galra crew that exited the shuttle looked worn and weary, yet they still held their heads high with the pride of Imperial soldiers- the magenta insignia of the _‘Fire of Purification’_ emblazoned across their armored chests. 

Keith glared first at the sigils, and then at the soldiers who so arrogantly wore them. _They were proud to be under Sendak’s command_ , Keith mused. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, distracting himself from the deep growl rumbling in his chest. 

They met the paladins at an agreed distance from their respective ships, gathering in the empty field of gravel and dirt as if they were officers meeting in parlay out in the no-man’s-land of ancient warfare. From out of the ranks of the Galra, two figures emerged: one taller than any of the soldiers present, with a pointed chin and cheeks hollowed out by sharp features- the other, more heavyset than his companions with a singular oversized fang that comically jutted out from his bottom lip.

“Paladins,” The tallest of the Galra spoke, clearly an officer as denoted by the lines of rank displayed across his uniform, “This is… an odd turn of events, but I-”

 _“HEY!”_ Lance shouted, nearly diving his way between Keith and Shiro as he waggled a suspicious finger between the tall and heavy Galra. “Don’t we know you guys? You two were the ones that chased us around Galra High Command trying to stop us from having fun! What were your names? _‘Stern and Stocky’?”_

“Second Lieutenant _Chern_ , and First Sergeant _Stolkay_.” The Galra corrected, as if this mistake was one he had to correct all too often. “Yes. That was us.” 

“Well… What gives?” Hunk cocked his head, looking, of all things- dejectedly- at the two Galra soldiers. “I thought we all... bonded? You know? Had _fun_ together?”

 _“Yeah!_ We shared _popsicles!”_ Lance waved his arms between himself and Lieutenant Chern frantically, as if the Lieutenant had trampled an ancient, unspoken code of ethics. “Why join Sendak?”

 _“Sendak,”_ The shorter and more portly of the two chimed in, “Has amassed a fleet of thousands of battlecruisers. Uniting hundreds of broken factions under a single banner.”

“He’s… trying to rebuild the Empire.” Allura whispered, fear kneading its way into her at the thought of the ten thousand year-old regime having been toppled only for their efforts to be usurped by a zealot such as Sendak.

“He has the ambition to look past the shortsighted squabbles of territorial warlords trying to carve territory out for themselves. He embraces a much larger picture.” Lieutenant Chern added, “And makes promises of _peace.”_

Keith’s hand reached for the blade strapped across his hip, biting back a more aggressive reaction as he spits, “And does your peace come at the expense of _our_ lives? The lives of _our friends_ and _our families?”_ He squeezed the hilt of the blade, focusing his mind on the sturdiness of the luxite in his grasp and not the sharpening of his nails within his gloves. 

His words were refined into a razor’s edge, and he brandished his accusations against the Galra like a weapon unto itself. 

The unmistakable shine of luxite was evident in Keith's hand, and the Sergeant drew his superior’s attention to the weapon adorning the waist of the Red Paladin with a nudge and an indiscreet cough.

With his focus drawn down to the Paladin’s armaments, Lieutenant Chern could not help but notice the blade. Blood drained from the officer’s face, with the purplish hue of his skin tone visibly lightening in color as he scanned the scabbard housing the machete now wielded by the Red Paladin. 

Their gazes met for the longest of seconds -an eternity of unspoken apologies filling the tick between them, the Red Paladin’s furious damnation cursing his very existence with every fiber of his being. It burned, and Chern was the first to blink and pull away, so that he might be spared the Red Paladin’s contemptuous indignation. But while the Lieutenant attempted to regain his composure, he was betrayed by his own wandering eyes: eyes that kept drifting back to the blade drawn across Paladin’s hip.

The Galra’s shamefaced expression advertised his _regret: regret_ for the measures taken against their enemies and _regret_ for the fate that befell the Blades. 

Yet when the two had locked eyes, Keith had peered into the Galra’s very soul. He had stared into those deep wells of remorse in the Lieutenant’s golden gaze and had glimpsed not only the forsaken and solitary feelings of _regret_ , but the guilty conscience of a man who _knew_ what he had done. What Keith had seen… what the officer had been so keen on disguising as mere uneasy agitation was, in fact- _recognition._

_He knows something._ Keith tightened his grip against the hilt of Vrek’s blade, if only to stop his hand from shaking with rage. _Something he’s too afraid to reveal._

“Listen, we didn’t come here as enemies.” Shiro’s words were directed at the Lieutenant, but they were just as surely meant for Keith. “Whatever we may be, right now- we are not soldiers. Right now, we’re all just travelers. You asked for our help, and we are still willing to provide it.”

Lieutenant Chern nodded in response.

Keith clenched his teeth, growling out his agreeance and begrudgingly acknowledging Shiro’s argument. These Galra _were_ the enemy, and had the tables been turned, Keith _knew_ that the _‘Fire of Purification’_ would not extend to them the same kindness that they now offered these soldiers. 

Keith knew he was right, but he didn’t want to argue with Shiro over something so trite. So instead, he relented, “Hunk, you and Coran go take a look at their shuttle. Get them back on their feet. Pidge, show them how to track the buoys you dropped so that they can navigate their way out of the nebula. Allura, Lance, Romelle, take some of our food and water stores and share enough with them to make it to the next habitable system.”

With the assignments given, the Paladins began their work.

***

The repairs needed to get the shuttle operational again were _“rudimentary”_ , Hunk had said. _“An overheated combustion manifold,”_ the Paladin had explained, _“a simple enough fix.”_ The two had gotten the shuttle’s engine to fire successfully before Allura, Lance, and Romelle had finished loading up their cargo bay with food supplies.

As the rest of the team worked, Shiro questioned the Galra for any information they might have felt inclined to share. And while the Lieutenant was rather tightlipped regarding the point of departure or place of destination- he was willing to share force numbers of _‘The Fire of Purification’_ , along with the names of specific commanders who had joined Sendak’s growing movement.

Keith stood beside Shiro, his arms crossed over his chest, hearing- but not listening to the Lieutenants words as he explained how futile of an effort it would be to engage Sendak directly. He glared at the Lieutenant, his expression sour as his eyes bored holes into the side of the Galra’s face, watching the nervous sweat bead at his brow and catching only peripheral glances in response. 

With their tasks completed, the rest of the Paladins reconvened in a small semi-circle around Keith and Shiro, signaling to their leaders that their time amongst the stranded travelers was nearing its end. 

“Okay, I guess that means we’re about done here.” Shiro offered his hand out to the Galra officer: it was the wrong hand for a proper clasp- but the gesture was sincere and Shiro could only offer what he still had available to him. “Best of luck on your journey, Lieutenant Chern. Safe travels.” 

It took a second for Chern to process the deference he was being shown by the Black Paladin, but after a confused pause, he took the human’s forearm, and squeezed with all the conviction he might have shown another Galra. “And you, Takashi Shirogane. Thank you for helping us… and for showing us mercy. Not many would.”

“Well, a universe without mercy would be a dark place indeed, and it’s our duty to cast light into that darkness.” Shiro released the officer's arm, and turned back to the team. “Are we ready to keep moving?”

“Not yet,” Keith interjected, stepping forward and pulling his threatening gaze away from the Galra officer to instantly soften at the sight of Shiro’s steely eyes. He leaned closer to him, turning his back towards the rest of the Paladins so that he might whisper, “There’s… a few things I want to ask them about. _Privately._ I can catch up.”

_Please, Shiro…_ The thought was unspoken, but it was loud enough for Shiro to perceive. 

Keith turned his violet purple pupils to meet Shiro’s worried look, dispelling his concerns meeting his curiosity with feelings of beseechment reinforced by their bond through the Black Lion. 

“Okay,” Shiro relented, “Whatever you need.” He nodded towards the other Paladins, searching for any excuse he could to draw them away from Keith to give him the time and distance he needed. 

“There’s... a celestial satellite made of ice on the other side of this belt.” Pidge provided, “We could go there and replenish our freshwater supply.”

“And I’ll go with Pidge in the Green Lion and take a look at our navs,” Shiro turned back to Keith, resting his hand atop his shoulder and letting his touch linger somewhere in the space between colleagues and lovers, “see if we can make up for any lost time.”

With that, the Paladins took their leave, returning to their Lions and leaving Keith alone with the Galra soldiers. 

Keith didn’t turn to face the Galra until his friends disappeared over the edge of the asteroid field, granting him the illusion of solitude and the consideration of not having to feel the burning of their eyes as they attempted to dissect his fragile state. 

His hand wandered down to rest against the hilt of Vrek’s blade, summoning the Galra’s attention to what they had been so intent on ignoring. “You’ve seen this before?”

None of the Galra soldiers dared meet Keith’s gaze, and instead averted their eyes to the rocky terrain beneath them with a sudden and intense interest. 

“Talk.” Keith demanded, fingers squeezed tight around the last vestiges of his mate’s memory. _“Now.”_

Lieutenant Chern took cautious steps towards the Paladin, wringing his hands out in front of him in a vain attempt at disguising the fear that was clawing its way out of his throat. Gone was the confidence and respect he had shown Shiro moments earlier- evaporated in a hasty mist like water cast upon hot coals. Chern held his hands out to the Paladin, wide and empty, palms pointed towards the orange sky in submission, showing the Paladin that he had nothing to hide, and that he was unarmed. 

“We’ve seen that weapon before… on a Blade prisoner aboard our flagship.” Chern began, his voice faltering with the same reluctance of a chastised child confronting a very angry parent. “He was... _executed_ for treason against the Empire…”

Keith pulled the blade out of its scabbard, an action that caused all the Galra to flinch, as such a weapon was burdened by the pains of the history they had known it to have. But Keith made no move to attack, instead, he held the blade up at eye level- presenting it to the Galra for closer inspection. 

“Is _THIS_ the blade? Are you _sure?”_ His hand was trembling, forcing the blade to wobble in his grasp. He grabbed his wrist and squeezed, cutting off the circulation in his wrist in order to steady his uncertain hand. Had his bond bracelet not been tucked under his suit, he would have covered it as well, summoning whatever strength Vrek could give him.

The Galra narrowed his eyes, scanning the blade extended to him, “I am sure. I will _never_ forget it.”

“I… I recovered this from the Blade of Marmora. If _THIS_ was the blade of that prisoner you spoke of, then… then how did…?” 

[[ >>> ]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8boVff7qnoM&ab_channel=ClintonShorter-Topic)

“The Blade was… after his execution… placed in a fighter with his belongings and set adrift with an active distress beacon.” The Galra elaborated, “Commander Sendak wanted to send a message…”

Keith lowered Vrek’s blade, his arms heavy with the weight of revelation: a burden comparable to the crushing tribulations of his heart. “And the message was for me…” He looked up at the Lieutenant, finding the bravery within himself to face answers he knew himself not ready for. “Was it quick?”

Chern met Keith’s gaze.

“No. It was not.”

Keith held the Lieutenant’s stare, as if the answers he sought -the answers he did not think he could bear to hear- might slip away if he so much as blinked. “Then... how did he die?” 

There was no reply from the Galra. 

Lieutenant Chern’s silence spoke at volumes he dared not utter. 

Keith pulled his bond bracelet out from under his flight suit, kneading the strands of fabric between his fingers as some form of comfort in absence of the mate that had been… 

  
  
  
  


_… executed._ The mere thought felt like a shock to his nervous system.

  
  
  
  


This was the closest he would get to answers, the nearest he could find himself to his mate’s final moments. 

He needed to know.

“Tell me. _Please…_ he was my…” Keith’s eyes fell to his own wrist, pulling many eyes down to his bond bracelet and providing the Lieutenant with some measure as to the importance of the information he seemed so disinclined to share.

“I don’t know much, but what I do know is that the Komar had been working on him for nearly an entire movement.” Chern sighed, “Even through the soundproofed hull, there were some nights where we could hear his screams throughout the halls.”

Keith brought his free hand up to his face, covering his eyes so that his enemy might not see the tears he would shed for his bond mate. 

“When the Druids were done with him… he was strung up in one of our hangar bays. Our entire company was ordered to be present for his execution. This… wasn’t normal…” The Lieutenant struggled to find the words befitting of the barbarism he had witnessed. The barbarism that _he_ had been implicated in. “Instead of shooting him and being done with it, we had…” He stopped himself, “We were all _ordered_ to take part in the execution.”

Lieutenant Chern gestured to the blade in Keith’s loosening grip, continuing, “We were all handed that blade. And we all had to bury that knife into the body of the condemned. So we followed our orders, and did as we were told… again, and again, and again…” 

Keith didn’t feel the blade slip out of his hand, nor did he hear the dull thud it made when it landed against the surface of the asteroid. He pulled his hands up around his face, threading his fingers through his hair until his palms covered his ears. 

He thought that he was ready to hear this.

  
  
  
  


He wasn’t.

  
  
  
  


_Stop. Stop talking._ Keith’s words were silent to those present and audible only within his own mind. 

But his pleas did not escape his mouth, and his hands did nothing to mute the words coming from Lieutenant Chern. They did not stifle the vivid echoes of agony that he had felt through the bond he shared with his mate while he had been traveling through the Quantum Abyss.

“... I don’t know how long it took for him to actually die… but… he was brave. He stayed standing for as long as he could but… eventually, we were all just vivisecting a corpse.”

_Stop it, please._ Keith was begging, but his requests were merely silent, and not falling upon deaf ears.

He could feel it -the phantom pains of his mate’s execution- the imaginary wounds that had tortured his body and tormented every waking moment of his pitiful life. At the time, the nearly indescribable pain he had been forced to endure had felt like a knife being repeatedly slipped into the soft tissue of his yielding flesh… because that _is_ what had been happening to Vrek.

“Sendak didn’t want us to stop. He wanted everyone present to see, up close, what the cost of rebellion was…” 

_Stop. Shut up. Please._

Vrek had been subject to pain unimaginable at the hands of the Galra… at the hands of _these_ Galra… it was savage, it was cruel, and it was inhumane. It was not the future that Vrek had deserved.

Keith recalled the final thoughts of his mate, of the last time that Keith would be able to feel the presence of his deepest love anchoring their souls together. With the context he was now given by the Lieutenant’s recollection of his mate’s execution, Keith could recreate his beloved’s final moments. Vrek had been dying -he was being brutally murdered- and despite his own approaching finality, in spite of the anger he could have felt towards his tormentors… he had instead focused his efforts to tell Keith how much he had loved him. 

In the face of all that pain, Vrek had died with only love in his heart.

“... What we had done to that Blade will haunt me for the rest of my days…”

_Shut up._ Keith’s hands found their way to his chest, grasping at the imaginary, yet all-too-real pain radiating from his heart.

He held that pain close, and he focused on the brutality that his mate had endured. He remembered the fragmented thoughts that he had only glimpsed within the Quantum Abyss. He grasped at the familiarity that his mate’s presence provided, seeking clarity through the dense cosmic static that had first muddied what his mate had wanted to tell him. He let go of the pain, and instead seized the memory of love that he had buried beneath the trauma and psychosis, in order to hear his mate clearly.

_Keith, I’m sorry I can’t stay. Meeting you was the best thing to have ever happened to me. I love you. Be strong and be brave. Please be brave, Keith… and goodbye._

They had wanted a future _together…_ a future with _peace…_ a future with a _family…_ with _kits…_ and now…

  
  
  
  
  


… that was gone. Because of the Galra. 

  
  
  
  
  


“... if it is any consolation, he retained his dignity until his dying breath. He did not beg for mercy nor did he plead for his life…” 

The Lieutenants' words faded as Keith slipped back into the memory of what had been a living hell- a waking nightmare of which his only release was the even more terrifying realization that his mate had been _tortured to death._ Keith had been exposed to agony unrivaled, but at least he had survived it. His mate had not.

_SHUT UP._ He was screaming in his mind, his thoughts loud enough to reverberate through his skull like a gunshot in a panic room- but not loud enough to have crawled their way out of him in order to fill the emptiness between himself and the Imperial soldiers before him. _SHUT. UP._

He didn’t realize he had stopped breathing until he was suddenly gasping for air- filling his lungs with the oxygen rich atmosphere of the nebula as if he was starving for it. His heart was thundering inside of his chest, his sternum a delicate cage containing his even more delicate emotions. His vision was blurred, a psychedelic mixture of tears and colors as adrenaline flooded his system and fed his fears.

Keith could taste the saltiness of his tears as they streamed down his face and edged their way past his dry lips. He could feel the pressure inside him that threatened to capsize his lungs, and the wetness that coated his hand and trickled its way down his arm to soak into the fabric of his suit.

The air was filled with the shrill sound of terrified screams. Screams that cut through the mental barriers Keith had been erecting around his emotions in the wake of the devastating conversation he was having. But for once, the screams he heard were not his own.

No sooner did the wretched sound of horror reach his ears did he lift his eyes off of the floor to travel up the length of his outstretched arm. Keith’s forearm was coated in a dark, viscous liquid: a deep, purple ink that dripped down the side of his armor.

Keith’s expression was trapped somewhere between the realms of sadness and shock as he looked past his blood-stained gauntlet to find his hand buried in the unarmored throat of Lieutenant Chern. Razor tipped fingers had torn into the Galra’s neck, ripping through cartilage and shredding his jugular. 

Gripped tightly in his fist were the Lieutenant’s vocal chords, silencing the Galra so that he could no longer be attacked by the gruesome words spilling from his memories. 

He relaxed his hand, pulling his fingers out of the Lieutenant’s throat with a repulsive _squelching_ sound. Keith stared, first- at the dying officer as he fell back into the arms of his comrades, convulsing as he choked on his own blood, then- to his own monstrous claws, his digits dyed purple from actions of his own savagery. 

_“... go.”_ Keith’s command was carried on a whisper, drowned out by the gurgling of the expiring Lieutenant and the hysteria of those trying to save him.

_“GO!”_ Keith snarled at the Galra soldiers, anger burning in the amber of his yellowing eyes as an inhuman growl resonating through his hollow heart.

The Galra stumbled their way into a hasty retreat as they fell over themselves trying to carry their commander back to their shuttle. There was not a medic between them, and each of them were straining to act through the memorized motions of a battlefield dressing as they wrapped their Lieutenant’s bleeding throat with a strip of fabric. 

Keith staggered his way back to the Black Lion, lost in a haze of self-inflicted melancholy as he stepped into the maw of the war machine with all the resignation of a mouse allowing itself to be swallowed by a tiger. 

He set Vrek’s blade down next to the console and collapsed into the seat in his cockpit, his gaze affixed on a distant nothingness as he leaned his helmeted head back against the chair. 

Keith pulled his helmet off, letting unkempt black hair spill out from beneath the restricting plastoid bucket. He held his helmet out in front of him, staring into the clear visor and catching the reflection of gold-tinted Galra scleras and slitted pupils staring back at him. Keith tapped at the glass with sharpened nails that refused to retract, fingertips tainted with the purple hue of not just the blood of another Galra- but of the pigmentation of an ever fading familiarity that he failed to see in the creature he had become. 

  
  
  


He hated it.

  
  
  


He hated himself.

  
  
  


He hated seeing this constant reminder of his own dwindling humanity.

  
  
  


He hated having to fear what he would see in himself every time he so much as glanced at a mirror. 

  
  
  


He was Galra, and it was getting harder and harder to deny that fact.

  
  
  
  


Keith threw his helmet over his shoulder, letting the empty shell clatter against the floor of the cockpit and disappear from his sight. 

Through the screens before him, Keith could see through the Lion’s eyes- and he watched as eight Galra soldiers struggled to carry Lieutenant Chern back up the gentle incline of the hill that their shuttle had been parked on. He didn’t know if the Lieutenant was still alive, but his men seemed determined to get him off of this rock regardless. 

Keith pressed his palm against his face, tasting iron in his mouth as he unintentionally smeared purple blood across his unscarred cheek. When he pulled his hand away from his face, he noticed that his hands had still not reverted to their unthreatening and pinkish state. 

He closed his eyes.

_Breathe,_ he told himself. _In for five seconds. Hold for three seconds. Release for five seconds._

He opened his eyes, yet his hands remained distinctively alien- his talon tipped fingers refusing to recede into a more innocuous state of being. He tore his eyes away from his hands, pulling the hideous reminders of his loathsome lineage out of his line of sight in order to grip the controls of the Black Lion. 

A fire burned inside of him, a residual flame that had been ignited in his heart from the blaze that had consumed him back on Karrahe. The Blade of Marmora had been all but eradicated- and the path that had set them upon their extinction had been spearheaded by the _‘Fire of Purification’_. So many Blades had been lost... murdered… _executed_... and while they would be mourned, their deaths could not go unanswered. 

He squeezed tight around the flight sticks beside him, letting his pointed fingers prick small holes into the palms of his hands.

He eyed the Galra soldiers with disdain, his cat-like pupils emanating a seething hatred as he watched the soldiers scramble their way through their shuttle’s airlock.

_It was them._ Keith scowled at the shuttle in his sights. _They did this. They killed Vrek._

His fingers hovered over the weapon systems of the Black Lion, trembling with reluctance as Keith’s resolve balanced him between wrathful vengeance and pitying mercy. _They didn’t show Vrek any mercy, why should I be any different?_

The Galra shuttle’s engines glowed as the transport began to take off. 

_It would be so easy_ , Keith thought, only needing to apply the slightest amount of force to pull the trigger on his Lion’s lasers.

He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his head, each pulse echoing in his mind and flooding his brain with the prospect of revenge and the potential for him to regret his actions. 

_No,_ he urged himself, _not regret. Never regret._ He had loved Vrek with all his heart, and he would not insult the memory of that love by failing to bring his mate’s executioners to justice. He had _promised_ his mate that the Galra would pay for what they had done, and he had promised _himself_ that he would be the one to make them pay.

The Blades _deserved_ justice. 

_Vrek_ _deserved_ justice.

Keith would be the avatar for that justice, and he would offer his fallen brethren the retribution they deserved. 

He rested his fingers against the triggers on his flight sticks, ready to commit himself to the oath that he had sworn in the pyres of his dead family. 

But he hesitated...

_“... it’s our duty to cast light into that darkness”_ , Shiro words floated back into the forefront of Keith’s mind, causing his will to falter and his fingers to ease off of the triggers of his Lion’s main canon. Shiro wouldn’t want Keith to descend into the darkness that would surely enter his soul should he have resorted to murder. 

The Galra shuttle lifted off of the surface of the asteroid, pulling away from the weak gravity produced by the small satellite. 

Shiro had been right, “ _a universe without mercy would be a dark place, indeed”_ \- but as Keith watched the Galra shuttle pulled away, he couldn’t help but think, _some people belong in the darkness. Some people don’t deserve to see the light._

Shiro was an idealist, a beacon of purity amongst the wretched and the damned, driven by his sense of honor and duty. He was a soldier, through and through, and he would want Keith to be better.

Keith was all impulse and volatility, a marionette whose limbs and actions were tethered to the strings of his heart- guided by pain and driven by instinct. He was a puppet, helpless to the whims of the puppeteer.

Keith wasn’t Shiro.

And he wouldn’t try to be. 

He yanked back on the Black Lion’s controls, aiming its massive head at the retreating Galra craft, and pulled the triggers. 

He opened himself up to the darkness that he had once feared, letting the malice of his actions gnaw at the mutilated remains of his soul.

A quick flash of superheated plasma erupted from the maw of the Black Lion, chasing the fleeing shuttle in its futile attempt to escape the retaliation they had feared when they had recognized the blade strapped around the Red Paladin’s waist. The blast impacted against the side of the shuttle, setting the ship ablaze within a fraction of a second. Within the blink of an eye, _‘Galra Shuttle Pod Kandek-twelve’_ was engulfed in a raging inferno, transforming a star-faring vessel into a scorching fireball that fell from the sky like an angel cast out from the empyrean to come crashing down upon the godless existence of reality. 

Keith didn’t bother scanning the smoldering wreckage of the shuttle. 

No one could have survived that. 

Instead, he turned his gaze back down to his hands- still clawed and incomparable to his mostly human anatomy, but now stained with more than just the literal blood of Lieutenant Chern. 

Keith stood, and stumbled his way out of the cockpit and back into the Black Lion’s cargo bay, grabbing a spare pair of gloves out of his wardrobe and stopping at one of the barrels of fresh water provided to him by Commander Bogh. Keith growled at the Imperial insignia painted across the side of the container, and dragged his clawed talons across the offensive symbol in order to deface the very image that had proudly proliferated generations of suffering and heartache. 

He removed the lid of the barrel itself, and plunged his face into the tepid water. Keith came up, gasping for air, and proceeded to scrub his hands vigorously. He watched as the blood was washed from his skin to float insoluble in the barrel before him like a mistake that could never be cleansed. 

Once clean of the blood he had spilled, his hands returned to normal. 

With a deep sigh of relief, Keith peered down into the water -focusing on his slitted pupils and gold-tinted eyes- and willed himself back to humanity. 

Breathe, he reminded himself. _In for five seconds. Hold for three seconds. Release for five seconds._

Slowly, his eyes returned to normal, and he was himself once more. But the water in front of him was still tainted with blood, as a persistent reminder of the path he had chosen.

 _“GAH!”_ Keith kicked the barrel of water over, letting days worth of water waste itself as it flowed through the grated floors lining the interior of the Black Lion. 

“I’m not like them… I’m _not_ like them...” Keith whispered in the solitude of his lion, his hands returning to familiar positions of which would alleviate the growing emptiness he felt: his left hand clasped tight around the bond bracelet adorning his wrist; his right drawing small, idle circles around the bond mark on his shoulder.

He had welcomed the darkness into himself, letting his heart gorge itself on something other than his own pain.

He should have felt better, and he would try to convince himself that this darkness _did_ feel better than the misery he had grown accustomed to. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“I’m fine...” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He wasn’t. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIRST OF ALL, did you try listening to these accompanying musical tracks? If so, did it add anything? PLEASE give me feedback on whether or not you liked this feature, that way I can go forward thinking of what other tracks to use in tandem with future chapters. 
> 
> Second of all. I am sorry this chapter took longer than expected... its length caught me by surprise and I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to address the beats that I had dedicated to it. With nearly 17,000 words, I feel like it's getting harder and harder to deny that I am writing a full on novel at this point... so please bear with me if updates take longer than expected.
> 
> This chapter was a bit tricky, as its final segment needed to illustrate a significant change in Keith's heart. His actions here are cold and vicious, meaning that this moment needed to be EARNED... so I hope that these final moments landed with their inteneded impact. While the previous chapter was an almost excessive depress-fest, I aimed for this chapter to evoke a more dynamic range of the emotions... delivering a few heartfelt smiles is, I suppose, my apology for having put you all through the depress-fest that was the previous chapter. xD
> 
> Thank all of you for all of your overwhelming support, I always welcome your feedback and reactions and I sincerely appreciate everyone who takes time out of their lives to read my scribbling and drops a comment down below. It's YOUR encouragement and YOUR interest that pushes me to want to improve every chapter... to be ambitious and to deliver the best experience in my power to craft.
> 
> Next chapter, we start the Battle for Earth! Stay tuned!


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